


waiting at the rim

by LambentLaments



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians - Rick Riordan, The Heroes of Olympus - Rick Riordan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Alternate Universe - Gangsters, Alternate Universe - Mortal, Coming of Age, Drug use and rehabiltation, First Time, M/M, Masturbation, Suicidal Thoughts, a tinny bit catcher in the rye-ish maybe?, neh just that one chapter
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-12
Updated: 2015-11-10
Packaged: 2018-03-17 09:50:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 26,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3524744
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LambentLaments/pseuds/LambentLaments
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first time he kills a man, Nico di Angelo is 14.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Dust

**Author's Note:**

> Rated for later chapters.

                             They’re dust  
like you; the universe is Proteus.  
Shadow, you’ll travel to what waits ahead,  
the fatal shadow waiting at the rim.  
Know this: in some way you’re already dead.

-Jorge Luis Borges, To the One Who is Read by me,

 

 

 

The first time he kills a man, Nico di Angelo is 14.

When he has gained enough lucidity to let his mind dwell on the matter, he thinks how infinitely preferable it would have been, to have been alone while doing so. He waits for remorse, and is surprised to find that it does not come. The death had been inevitable, he knew so even before his father told him, via his rigged cell phone. Even so, he thinks he should be feeling something more than this emptiness, a calmness that borders dangerously with ennui. He waits for his mind to shatter, for the sharp fragments to dig into his lungs and leave him gasping in pain, the way it did when Bianca died. Then he holds his thought, because it is sacrilegious to compare Bryce’s death, or in fact any death, with Bianca’s.

But all this comes only after he has recovered consciousness in a dingy motel room that smells sharply of dirt and drying mud. He is made to drink Gatorade, as if it is a proper substitution for real medicine, or as if dehydration is the most pressing of his problems. Still, he is glad that they didn’t take him to a hospital. Reyna and Hedge have enough experience to know how solid evidence a medical record can be in court. He might be underage, and his father wealthy and powerful enough in the shady world of crime, but he does not want to take his chances. It would, admittedly, not be his first time being locked up; the Lotus Hotel and Camp Half-Blood being as good a prison as any, but there is a difference in perception between these places and the juvi, if not in actual execution.

He is shocked upon hearing that it’s the afternoon of 30 July- he’s been unconscious for three days. (He is actually more surprised that he is alive, but that is a common enough thought for him nowadays.) Only two days left to deliver the Athena Parthenos. At the thought he scrabbles for his jean pocket and lets out a sigh of relief upon finding the USB stick still there. Seemingly innocuous, yet its contents are enough to bring down an Empire.

Somewhat calmed, he asks what happened. He knows he should remember, but all he remembers is the screaming. When they start telling the story, he finds he does not need to listen. The details make the act more real.

“I didn’t mean to scare you.” He says bitterly. “I didn’t mean to…to poison another friendship. I’m sorry.”

He does not think they realize that he is saying that he is sorry about scaring them, but not really about the murder itself.

Reyna studies his face. “Nico, I have to admit, the first day you were unconscious, I didn’t know what to think or feel. What you did was hard to watch…hard to process.”

Coach Hedge chews on a stick. “I gotta agree with the girl on this one, kid. Smashing somebody’s head with a baseball bat, that’s one thing. But burying that creep? That was some dark stuff.”

To be honest, Nico is surprised himself at what he did. When he has ever imagined him killing someone, it was either with his pocket knife, its blade of black reinforced steel, or by using his father’s ‘powers’, his mobster minions staging a quiet, quick death, and disguising it as an unfortunate accident. He could have lived with the thought of shooting someone, or even with the prospect of tasering them, as his mother has been killed when he was only a little boy. He did not remember, of course, the scene of Maria being electrocuted by Zeus’ order. Father had ensured his forgetfulness with intensive therapy from the Lethe. It had not stopped him from recovering a hidden file from his father’s vaults, and knowing the truth.

What he had done was actually far worse. Bryce had screamed in vain as Nico buried him alive. Town of Buford, South Carolina was scantily populated, and the overgrown fields kept their silence. Had there been blood? He tries to remember. He remembers hitting Bryce’s head with a shovel when the thrashing kept capsizing the hole in the ground, but Bryce had been well and whole (and conscious) by the time dirt hid the last of his brown hair. If he wasn’t dead then, he would most certainly be so by now.

“Why did you bring me back?” he asks. “You knew I couldn’t help you anymore. You should’ve found another way to keep going with the statue. But you wasted three days watching over me. Why?”

Coach Hedge snorts. “You’re part of the team, you idiot.”

“It’s more than that.” Reyna rests her hand on Nico’s. “What I told you about my father…I’d never shared that with anyone. I trust you, Nico.”

He stares aghast at the girl who says she trusts him, when he cannot trust himself, cannot believe he will stop at Bryce, should circumstances push him. He stares at the girl who killed her insane father to escape even more abuse. She has spent her years building up, in her conscience, defenses against murder. For Reyna to blame him, she must also blame herself. Nico reels with the extent of her hypocrisy. It is not the first time he thinks her name suits her well, for she truly is a queen. She plays politics, telling justified lies to everyone, even herself.

Coach Hedge is smiling as well. The ex-mugger has had his scruples stripped from him far more slowly, in many bouts of lesser degrees. Nico knows that the strength needed to knock someone out and to kill someone is far less discernible than most believe. He’s seen some of his father’s men being punished for botching up a job; left someone alive who should be dead, but more often, the other way around. Is it possible that Hedge’s baseball bat is not as reliable as weapon as he might believe? Have any of his jumps involved dragging a body to a nearby dump? Hedge’s acceptance is jarring. But then again, the coach’s girlfriend is having a baby. The promise of silence is certainly a good deal for a better life for his child. Compared to the things they’ve done so far, blackmail is practically civil.

Nico does not bring himself to snoop. Whatever their faults are, the fact that he is now a murderer does not change. He’s as hypocritical as the rest of them for trying to match up their sins with his. Instead he relinquishes himself to their fucked up sense of camaraderie.

“No more shadow traveling. We can’t have you dissolving again.” Reyna continued. “Hedge thinks he’s found another way to go. It’s all he’s talked about for the past three days.”

From Greece to Italy to Portugal, they’ve been travelling by hitching up with his father’s associates and underlings, so as not to leave records of crossing national borders. Tense rides from private jets and sleek, black Lincoln Towns have all but burnt him out. Shadow travel, Nico muses, is a particularly elegant way of describing buying help with info, from drug lords and gang leaders. It is ironic he should find their presence exhausting, seeing how his father is one of them, but their constant prying, and their thinly veiled attempts at winning him over or kidnapping him, has kept him on edge for days now. Reyna is right about him possibly ‘dissolving into shadows’. There were offers of money or station, slight enough to be ignored completely. But some of the suggestions the men in suits held up to him were more than a little intriguing, drawing scenarios in which he would leave all this behind, his identity and his responsibilities as the son of his father assimilated. He refused those as well, not because he found the traditionally hedonistic lifestyle undesirable, but because the price, betraying his father, was too high. They had not known about the USB in his pocket, that is, until three days ago. They did not imagine father, as notoriously heartless he was, could go so far as to put his own son’s life on the line. If they had known, they would have killed him when he’d been in their grasp, instead of sending Bryce for a robbery and a clean up job.

“What kind of transportation are we talking about?” He asks, so as not to think of the man he killed.

Reyna stands up abruptly, and stares towards the north. He follows her gaze at the sky.

The _Pegasus_ is a beautiful specimen of a biplane, its body and wings a rich shade of wood grainy brown, and the nose, a bright mix of red and gold.

“It’s a Waco F.” He whispers.

“How’d you know?” Hedge says, surprised.

Nico gives an embarrassed cough. “I’m a bit of a World War 2 history buff.”

“Ah.” Reyna smiles, amused. “That explains the aviator jacket.”

Two other planes join the Pegasus, the Blackjack, which is (surprise!) black, and Guido, a white and light brown one. They descend with surprising agility, taking only a few spirals until they land on the meadows, sending over great yellow red clouds of dust with the whirl-whirl-whirl of their propellers.

Nico thinks he would like to ride the Pegasus, but its pilot, a regal man with a ridiculously equine face, looks approvingly at Reyna, so he settles for the Blackjack, whose pilot is eating a box of donuts with a blissful expression.

===

His heart fills with delight as the biplanes take off, and he almost laughs-almost, but not quite. It has been a long time he has laughed for the sake of laughing alone, and his mouth twists before the sound can properly escape. Instead there is a queasy gut feeling that brings with it a hesitance to look to the side and see the land far beneath him. He closes his eyes. _You_ _’re usurping_ his _realm._ He thinks.

He wonders at his own thought. What realm? What _he_?

He will never admit it to anyone, but flying scares him, inducing in him imaginings of, not falling (he sometimes dreams childishly that if he does fall, the ground will tear open and swallow him down to its depths), but of lightening. He prefers dark, musty basements to wide open spaces. There, a perverted feeling of belonging, so hard to find elsewhere, comes to him. Trying to locate the feeling, he keeps his eyes closed, though he’s leaving any want of sleep behind him in leaps and leagues.

He thinks of Bryce’s face, he thinks of camp, and of his father. He thinks of Bianca and Maria. Finally, he thinks of Percy. Percy, who has never killed a man, who is too good for a scrawny son of a mobster let alone a murderer.

“We’re here, boss.” The pilot buzzes from his earpiece.

Nico opens his eyes. The early light of day stretches into the horizon, and he tries and fails to let the lights hit his soul, to evoke a sense of hope or joy at a job nearly finished. He is still hollow, it seems. He wonders if he will ever be whole again. He spares a peek over the craft. The Halford-Broward Preparatory School, or as it is jokingly known to its students, Camp Half-blood, sits beneath him. In the light of dawn, the white marble buildings glow unearthly, as if it they belong to Greek gods of yore. Which will he hit if he decides to unbuckle and slide down the rushing currents? The pavillion? The infirmary? It will be so easy...a quick drop and a quicker end. In his mind's eye he sees it; his flabby, fleshy parts bursts like a ripe orange, they shovel the remaining gore into black plastic bags...

He catches sight of the large front gates and frowns. There are big black vans pulled up in neat rows. He’d expected delegations from the Roman Camp to be here, but it looks like everyone there has graced them with their presence.

They land in the outskirts of the forest, near the lake and the climbing wall, the facilities that have earned the private school its designation as ‘camp’. Coach Hedge and the pilots leave them, and Nico leads Reyna to the amphitheatre. The only reason he chooses the place over the big house is because of its proximity, but he hears, long before he can see, the students and the school body in the brink of war.

The amphitheatre is, of course, designed to magnify sounds from the stage, and the argument between the Latin School of California and Halford-Broward Preparatory School sounds nearly earsplitting from the stands. Nobody pays them any attention as they run down the steps. Nico slows down at the bottom, suddenly daunted at the prospect of addressing a whole crowd, but Reyna cuts her way confidently to the middle of the arena.

"Romans! Greeks!" She screams out the schools' mascots as if they are some official title. The way she is holding herself, she could hum the Teletubbies theme song and end up with the same effect as singing the La Marseillaise for an angry mob. "I bring you... the Athena Parthenos!"

 The white and gold USB shines between her two fingers. Nico fumbles for his pocket, and finds it empty. Apparently the queen also excels at pickpocketing.

 As soon as the rucus calms down, she drops the little thing to the marble floor, fingers daint and face set. And in front of hundreds of onlookers, she brings her foot down and shatters it.

 "There no longer is any need to blame each other." She says quietly. "Here were secrets of our families, enough to destroy the lives of those we love. No one will see them now. Secrets will remain secrets. We must stand united, against our true enemies."

The crowd is silent, or as silent as crowds can be. Nico watches the sea of uniformed students, in orange or purple ties depending on their school. Despite their finger pointings, they are of the same brood, of _money,_ through and through. Nico doesn't really care enough to wonder which kid made the USB and sold it, though there's enough esprit de corps left in him to cast a sidelong glance at Octavian.

He sees Reyna looking at him, as if he would be angry at her for destroying the USB. He supposes he should be, as it was his orders to conserve it, or at least elicit a copy for his father. Maybe he _is_ angry at her, but in truth he's exasperated at so many things around him he can't tell if his anger is specified at her. He tears his eyes from her, towards the masses, and he catches a glance of Annabeth whispering in Percy's ear, their hands locked between them. Ah, there's his anger now. The ground rumbles under him, and he thinks for a second, that he's channeling his anger to the marbled floor, breaking open a chasm. He looks behind him, and sees that it's only someone dragging a wooden desk, used as a sort of negotiation table, backstage.

The students are calmer now, and there's good cheer as they thump each other's backs. They're all neck deep in ellitism,  (that's where the half-blood joke comes from, of course. Their money and power earned them the phrase 'children of the gods'.) and there's talk of a celebratory luncheon, and Nico knows there'll be an after party and an after-after party and dinner after that, with handshakes and fake smiles full of innuendo. The promise of caviar on canapes and vol-au-vents grate his stomach. They're playing at being their parents, and they do it well. Heck, even _he_ does it well, he thinks dryly, the image of a screaming Bryce popping out somewhere from the dark corners of his mind.

And then he suddenly cannot take it, because even as he wonders if these kids know that he has killed for the preservation of their station and money, he suspects that they don't truly care.  Or perhaps they do care but wouldn't, in a few decades, and that transition from child to murderer is not something he wants to witness in anyone else but himself.  He does not want to see them learn of true insignificance, and try to exclude their own selves in the revelation. He walks out of the amphitheatre and to the dormitories, where he can turn off the lights in his  shared room and pretend that he is small enough again to hide amongst shadows. He looks to the ground as he takes measured steps out of the arena  and  surprises himself by not stumbling once.

At the grounds, the morning chill cuts through his hawaiian shirt and he pretends he is shivering because of some real frightening thing; ugly flying harpies or manticores or even a bronze dragon. He pretends he is a hero, and that he saved the entire world, not just the foamy bits on the top. He pretends that what he did was a _Good_ thing, that there really are such things in neat color codings.

He walks, thinking of nothing and wishing a thousand things. He muses if he broke just  a little bit more, made into a thousand tiny loose particles, even gravity would recognize his triviality. There is a cypress tree in front of the dormitory building, and the light manages to hit through its leaves just as he hits a bald spot in the grass patches. Sunlight strews black and white spots ahead of his feet, some merging into gray and some quite not, but all are lost in the dust flying up from under his feet.

 

To be continued


	2. Spectator

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two years later, Percy becomes the champion of Olympus, and Nico leaves camp half-blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably nothing you didn't expect, but, Warning- TEENAGE ANGST!

 

…what lover would not choose rather to be seen by all mankind than by his beloved, either when abandoning his post or throwing away his arms? He would be ready to die a thousand deaths rather than endure this.

-Plato, Symposium

 

 

They think him rash, the ones that talk about him in hallways, in front of lockers and in the dormitory common room.

 _The creepy kid. Yeah, you know the one, the angry emo one. Totally lashes out at you if you say anything at all. Fucking madcap, he is. You know who his dad is, right? He_ _’s_ _…_

They think him rash, but he thinks they’re wrong. He does wait a whole week to drop out of high school.

He’s there as a spectator as Percy is named the champion of Olympus. He’s there unseen, as the senior’s dripping neck is covered with a ribbon, and a gold medal drops to sit on his bare chest.

Nico is selfish (He knows he is, he wants too many things he can’t have), but he’s not masochistic enough to imagine himself in Annabeth’s place; being kissed in front of the whole school and everyone’s parents, swatting at Percy for getting his shirt wet, and he won’t insert his name for hers in Percy’s acceptance speech.

What he does, instead, is linger in quiet corners hence after, waiting for the senior class to finish, and sit himself next to the cafeteria table where Percy and his gang feast raucously. For a couple days, Nico dreams of Percy introducing him to all his friends and in private, giving him a heartfelt hug (it’ll be like taking a swim in the ocean, he imagines). By the time Wednesday rolls around, he will settle for a handshake and a ‘thank you’. It’s on Friday, that Percy’s eyes glaze over Nico’s corner one last time, and burning with shame and betrayal, Nico finally gives up.

“I’m leaving, sir.” He says to Mr. Brunner in the vice principal’s office. He’s considered not telling anyone, but drama needs an audience, and the prospect of his dramatic exit being unhindered by any concern at all is altogether too real a possibility for him to risk it.

“I see.” Brunner raises his eyebrows, but his tone is perfectly calm. “You do realize leaving the school grounds unauthorized for extended periods of time can result in you being suspended. But that hits rather close to your intention, doesn’t it?” He smiles tiredly. “May I ask why you are leaving?”

Nico hesitates, even though he hasn’t a bit of inkling to tell the truth. “I don’t…” His voice breaks pathetically, as it has been want to do the last few months. “I don’t belong, sir. I…everyone talks behi…”

He can’t get the words out, but Brunner doesn’t push him. That’s what he likes about the man, he doesn’t push, not when it feels like a small shove could topple him forwards and break him apart, Brunner doesn’t need to, he already _knows_.

He suddenly feels so very vulnerable, and he can’t help but let out his anger in counteract. “I don’t need a degree, I’m not going to college, I don’t want to, I already know I’m going to end up working for my father one way or another. You know this isn’t a school, it’s a training ground. It’s just a place for mini-snobs to meet other mini-snobs. Well you know what? I don’t need old-boy networks or school ties. I hate this fucking place and I’m leaving.”

He breathes in deeply, dizzy from both shock and catharsis at the fact that he just said ‘fuck’ to Brunner. He expects Brunner to get angry, for some reason he imagines the man shooting him with a bow and arrow, but the vice principal only tinkers with the tiny tinsel Christmas tree that’s sitting on his desk despite it only being the middle of November. “And I suppose nothing I can say can change your mind.”

Nico shakes his head, feeling like a child who has thrown a tantrum.

“Nico, do you know why I became a teacher?” He says, not pausing for an answer. “Whatever the function of a school may be, education is more than building school ties or getting a diploma, it’s about becoming more than what you are now. That’s all there is to it.”

Brunner gives him a long look, and Nico feels compelled to nod as if he were in class. “Deciding to work for your father can be a good thing. I know there are those who think there are rulebooks methods for success or happiness, and I’m telling you that they’re wrong. But you should never let yourself think that you have no choice in the matter.”

Brunner gets a slip of paper from the left side of his mahogany desk, unscrews his pen and signs his name on it. He hands it over to him, and Nico sees it’s a permission slip to leave the grounds. Nico gives him a confused look.

“I won’t see you suspended, Mr. di Angelo. This school will always be open for you, should you would care to return. ”

Nico doesn’t remember standing up, but he finds that he’s looming over the desk, and he stays frozen, not knowing whether he wants to tell the man the rest of the truth or shove the note back at him. Brunner seems to think, however, that Nico got up in order to leave. “I’ll show you the way out.” He says, and pushes his wheelchair out from under the desk.

“Mr. Brunner.” He says, not knowing why.

The man holds the door out for him and shakes his head. “Chiron. Call me Chiron.”

The door closes behind him, and he gathers up the luggage he’s left in front of the office. It’s a meager stash; he’s left his spare uniforms and all the textbooks save for the ones for his Greek and English classes. Still, the bags feel heavy in his hands as he makes out for the hall. His eyes keep straying towards the ground in apprehension as he walks, wondering what to say if he meets anyone. Very little, he finds out when meets Butch and Katie Gardner near the front door of the Big House. Her eyes trail after him, and he explains, “I’m leaving.”

“Oh.” She says, looking uncomfortable. He then realizes she doesn’t know him, at least not outside the shadow of his rumors. Perhaps she doesn’t even remember they had Biology together the year before. He turns abruptly, recognizing how misanthropic he must look only a second later and failing, as he always does, to not care.

He sees several others on the grounds looking at him as he walks towards Jules-Albert waiting at the front gates. He now knows to ignore them, but after he’s stashed his bags in the trunk of the car, he turns back, not daring to hope. If there’s just one person to call out for him, just one, he knows he’ll be too weak to fight back. He imagines, almost something like a lost memory…

 _Death Boy! You have friends-or at least people who would like to be your friend. If you_ _’d get your head out of their brooding cloud of yours for once-_

But of course, there is only silence. The looks several kids give him are curious, but unconcerned. And looking at the campgrounds he’s suddenly so angry his lashes start to cloy with moisture. His hands are shaking as he unties his orange tie from his neck and drops it. He pulls out Chiron’s slip, and he rips it. _Rip_ , he hates the school, for letting him kill someone for them, and not knowing. _Rip_ , he hates Percy, for not knowing he exists when he’s given _everything_ he has. _Rip_ , he hates himself, that he’s weak enough to care.

“You’re not my type, Percy.” He whispers.

“Sir?” Jules-Albert’s voice is dry, rattling, crawls out of his lips like a scarab beetle from a mummy’s mouth.

He drops the pieces of paper, willing the ground to swallow them up. He gets into the car, and doesn’t look back to see that it doesn’t.

===

His first ‘assignment’ comes quicker than he’d have expected, though he might have been the one to spur it on, for no parent enjoys seeing a lifeless child, even one who deals regularly with the dead. He’s spent weeks sulking around his father’s mansion, covering the windows with velvet drapes in fits of disgust at the LA sun, until the house is dark and cool enough for his mood. A few times he was restless enough to take meandering walks around the neighborhood, but scantily populated as the area is, those he does see are too happy and shining for him to endure their presence, so he takes to haunting the house, leaving only for occasional sojourns to the drive-in at McDonald’s with Jules-Albert.

He did not think his father had noticed his downward spiral towards depression, as few and between their interaction had been except for the major altercation of his first day of arrival, but he’s proven wrong when he’s woken by a phone call from father’s secretary. It’s not that the timing was inappropriate, it’s 2 in the afternoon, but his sleep schedule has been jumping around all over the place and he’s nearly nocturnal nowadays. In fact he’s spent the night alternating between watching cheesy old horror b-movies (his favorite so far is Attack of the Giant Leeches, followed closely by The Thing That Wouldn’t Die) and jerking off to gay pornography, until he managed to merge the two experiences by discovering tentacle porn, which was… surprisingly enlightening.

When he does as he’s bid and arrives at father’s office at DOA recording studio, he’s given two things, an order to ‘stop moping’, and an A4 file. Nico only takes up on the latter.

Opening the file at the mansion, the first thing to greet him is a crisp white note

 

> Capture alive. Await further instructions

Behind it, Dr. Matthias Thorn looks out at him from the page with one brown eye and a blue one. He has never met someone with mismatched eyes, and though he’d always assumed it to be an attractive trait, Dr. Thorn looks merely supercilious, as the asymmetry lends a ‘raised eyebrow’ feel even to a perfectly placid face. He flicks to the next page, to his personal info, which consists mostly of his liaisons with the Iranian underworld, and specific various crimes. As he reads his way down the long list, though not downright shocked, he can’t resist a small shudder of disgust. Even as a high school dropout or perhaps more so because he is, Nico has a begrudging appreciation for the highly educated, and the title of Doctor is particularly jarring in his mind.

He takes his file out to the garden chair, hoping for the sun to cast an illusion of fictiveness to the little black letters. Dr. Thorn is the headmaster of a military school, the position of which ensures a proximity to children that he thoroughly exploited. He muses for a second if Mr. D would be capable of any of these crimes, then dismisses it. As debauched rumors of his former principal’s various sexual escapades may be, those are not on the same level of immorality as these acts. When he reaches the end of the list, his shock is more or less orientated towards the fact that nobody has bothered to kill the monster up until now. Nico has had some of his innocence and a big chunk of his childhood immortality ripped from him at a young age, and he covets those values in others with a fierce nostalgia.

Is that why his first official target was picked, he wonders, watching the browning chrysanthemums in the flowerbed. Does father know? Nico can’t help but suppress a snort. Of course he does, he’s _father_. There is no way his effort to keep Hazel uninvolved and naïve went unnoticed, and it does not take much to assume he holds the same attitude towards others as well.

The job itself, capturing a school teacher, is easy enough, even for a complete novice, and it serves little other purpose than to test Nico’s mettle. The list is only father’s way of saying _he_ _’s a monster_.

Mobster, monster, mobster, monster, monster, monster…

He kicks off his shoes and warms his bare toes under the sun. Killing a monster isn’t murder, it’s a quest, he tells himself. It’s an ablution for the children of the world.

Even so he’s glad the note said capture _alive_.

A blast of water hits the chrysanthemums and a spray hits his toes.

“Oh, sorry, Nico. I didn’t see you there.” Bob says sheepishly, his smile too big to sit entirely naturally on his thin face.

“Hey. Mother’s not giving you a hard time again, is she?” Bob works mostly as a handyman, but also works at the garden should Nico’s stepmother wish it. It’s not often she does, however, as she prefers to tend the garden herself.

Bob shakes his crown of silver, and then looks curiously at the file. Nico folds it, a bit too abruptly. There are people, he considers, who should remain oblivious to the things that scuttle underground, as Small Bob slinks towards his leg and purrs against it. Bob does not know his last name, or perhaps he never had one, and years ago, Nico pitched the idea of naming him Bob Small, which stuck for a while, since everyone loves irony and the phrase ‘Bob Small has Small Bob’ was, by lack of a better word, adorable. That was before Nico read ‘Of Mice and Men’ and found the same irony in the denomination of Lennie Small. Bob is just Bob now.

“Bob, do you think some people are just _bad?_ ” He says, half to himself, staring at the file.

“You’re not bad person, Nico. You’re my friend.”

Nico starts telling him that that wasn’t what he asked, then stops. Bob is much smarter than people assume, despite his childish amiability, perhaps even smarter than Nico himself.

“Yeah, you’re my friend, Bob.” My only friend, he thinks but not says, and then burns with self-reproach at the bitterness of his own thought as Bob lays a giant’s hand on his shoulder. “Bob’s friend.” He says it like a salutation, and Nico wonders if he’s worthy enough to be knighted so.

===

Capturing a school teacher is an easy job. It does not stop him from failing spectacularly.

He gets a gun after the file, and a week to practice. If anyone were to judge, they’d have said he were being lackadaisical. In truth Nico cannot tune out the feeling that it is wholly unnecessary, his gun is for threatening, not for shooting.

That’s why the safety catch is still on when he enters Thorn’s room.

He leaves his men behind to take care of security, which is far stronger than what should be necessary in a mere school, even a military one. He’s been given five men with him, all dry and seasoned. He’s come to think of them as his Spartus, so stony-eyed and toneless they all are, they could have crawled up from their dead graves. He moves along the short corriodor leading towards Thorn’s room alone. Nico’s stealth is something he has had forever, and which that works almost unconsciously for him. He merges into blind spots and treads uncarpeted floors silently, as if the shadows themselves reach out for him, and muffle his presence.

Those skills are somewhat useless when someone is pointing a gun at your chest. That fact becomes apparent when Dr. Thorn, instead of cooperating, whips out a semi-automatic from seemingly nowhere, with the speed of a scorpion pointing its sting.

There is a feeling of detachment as he stares down the barrel of the gun, as if he’s only there as an observer of his own fate. His heart is beating so fast in his chest doesn’t even register as fear anymore. It feels like anticipation.

In the one and a half second Thorn takes to pull his trigger, there is only one thought that flashes in his head, one single thought that stops him from trying to dodge.

“Shoot-“ At the single word let loose involuntarily from his lips, the door is flung open and one of his men open fire. Another knocks Nico over sideways and the Thorn’s bullet misses by an inch, leaving a feeling of air rushing by. On the stone floors, his body registers again, and the world comes crashing into him in colors brighter than life. At the moment, it’s mostly red, red, red.

Nico leaves before they finish cleaning up the remaining lumps. He shouldn’t, he knows, but he doesn’t think he can control himself for much longer. He sits on the backseat of his car and gestures into the rear-view mirror and makes the driver take him to McDonalds. In his room, he eats two big Macs and drowns a large coke. He throws everything back up in less than a minute. He’d been foolish to mistake the gnawing emptiness inside of him with hunger.

Sitting in the floor of his bathroom, with no intermediate chuckle or grin, he starts laughing hysterically. It lasts only a minute, but by the time it ends, there are tears in his eyes, and the last snort sounds strangely like a sob. The tiles reverberate with the sounds, and he imagines the fates can hear him, and are laughing with him in a sick concerto, for in that moment when he saw the gun and knew with absolute clarity that he knew he was going to die, there was only one thought in his head, that _He was going to see Bianca again._ He’d forgotten about the transceiver, and his order to shoot was never meant for his men’s earpieces. He gasps for breath, it’s been a long time since he last laughed, and he’s forgotten how tiring it can be. He consciously notes how his each muscle aches after its spasms.

The lingering taste of vomit is as abhorrent as the twisting strings of fate. He leans forward, spits once more, and flushes down the brown mess. Big Macs and coke cannot bring the dead back alive.

===

Nico has spent a disproportionately large section of his life learning not to think of some things, the list of things not to think about growing longer over the years. It is, thus, a good thing that he’s learned a new, effective method. Afterwards he locks the door to his room and spends two days doing nothing but read the Symposium and fuck himself with his fingers. He counts up to thirteen the times he ejaculates, then no longer bothers as orgasms start to yield only drops of wetness on his hands. He rereads Aristophanes’ speech, lingering over the part where he says homosexuals are brave, and the part where he talks of the ‘original people’, and tries to decide if he likes or hates the man for saying those things. He imagines him fucking a mirror image of himself, identical limbs intertwined, two pale torsos converging until he is androgynous, spherical and whole. He wraps his left hand around his cock, and curls two, then three fingers into himself, moving in exaggerated slowness until it is too much of an exertion to stretch his arm so he twists, and lets himself come.

He wakes on the third day, with a sore ass and aching wrists, the sun unpleasantly warm on his sticky skin. He finds his pajama bottoms from the floor, makes to pull it on, and then stops, leaving them pooled at his feet. He slicks his fingers with the pomegranate scented lotion he stole from his step mother’s bathroom and fists himself. He’s Alcibades, coy as can be and he imagines Socrates fucking his thighs until, for some inexplicable reason, it’s a green-eyed, black-haired boy that’s moaning in his ears. He stops thinking then, concentrating only on the rhythm of his wrists and the rising static in his ears, and jerks off quickly and efficiently, splattering the flaking sheets one last time.

The sight that greets him upon entering the dining room is one of the strangest he’s ever seen.

He squints, but the scene is still there, so it’s probably not some over-masturbation induced hallucination. “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Your parlor is dusty, you should fire that old maid. And the living room was locked.” Charon, father’s receptionist and subordinate, deadpans, not looking up from his PDA. The drum of the washing machine is washes out his words somewhat.

“I wasn’t talking to you.”

“I came to see you, but you were apparently sleeping. He let me in.” Reyna says, with a smile that is not quite a smirk.

He gets a cup of coffee so he can function enough to address the situation (scalding, bitter, and dark, just like Nico himself), and pulls Reyna to the second study.

“You shouldn’t talk to him.” He says, knowing Charon can hear him.

“Why not?” She sounds amused, as if Nico is being jealous.

Nico doesn’t answer until he’s shut the door. “They call him the ferryman.”

“The ferryman? But wh-.”

He cannot bring himself to explain the extent of human trafficking. “How did you find me here?”

Reyna sits on an upholstered settee, so casual she’s virtually regal. “I had Jason’s friend, Leo, I think it was, hack into your school account.”

“Ah, of course.”

She ignores his sarcasm and pats the seat next to her. The gesture’s somewhat condescending, but he does as he’s bid. “I’m sorry it took me so long. I’d have come here sooner, but it’s been pretty hectic.”

He nods. Reyna’s the school body president, as well as head of the debate club and the runner for the track team.

“It was pretty messy business.”

“Um... What?”

“Don’t you know? Everyone’s talking about it. “Ocatavian killed himself.”

It takes a couple seconds for the words to sink in. Then it occurs to him to say something. “How?”

“He poured petroleum on himself, lit himself on fire, and jumped off the roof of the Senate House.”

He doesn’t bother asking her why. After the business with the Athena Parthenos, Octavian has lost his sponsors, been voted off the school council, and sentenced to perpetual ridicule from his peers. People have died for less. Nico’s not really guilty, but he feels a sense of responsibility for the death that he knows is shared with Reyna.

“Pretty dramatic way to die.”

“They’re guessing he was high when he did it. Not that we’ll never know for sure, there wasn’t much left for blood testing.” She forces a thin smile upon her face. “But enough of that. How are you? What have you been doing?”

“Not much. Reading.”

She latches onto a chance to change the subject. “Have you? What have you been reading?”

“Just… Horror stuff.” He lies, knowing he will be believed. He likes to think that his fondness for the classics and history books is an egotistical attempt at escapism rather than real passion for the subject matter. (May his grapes be sour)

Reyna nods. Neither of them is any good at small talk, and Nico feels uncomfortable with her effort. He sighs. “Aren’t you going to ask me why I quit?”

He gets the thin smile again. “I didn’t want to ask, but Nico, you do know there’ll always a place for you at New Rome. You’ll have me there, and Hazel, too. If you quit to get away from Percy…”

He doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t need one, since yes, he really is that obvious. Reyna shifts, and he can tell she wants to hug him. He can’t help stiffening, he hasn’t showered in three days and reeks of pubescent sweat and sex, but neither can he help feeling disappointed when Reyna, seeing him draw back, does so as well.

“It’s not what you think. There’s more.” He swallows. He hasn’t told Hazel about the Achilles’ curse. She may be a year younger than him, but he feels keenly custodial over her, and will ensure her blindness of the deeper dredges of her family for as long as he can, may it mean having his wound fester by itself. His hesitation with Reyna is different; she’s already world-weary, and the urge to protect seems stronger on her half. The problem is, he’s not sure where to start.

Perhaps he should start from when he heard Percy saying he needs his swimming scholarship, which is offered to the winner of the annual competition; the Olympus games, in order to get into the school of his choice (later he learns it’s his only his school of choice because it’s Annabeth’s. Oh, how the fates laugh.).

Or perhaps he should start from him looking over the records of the contestants, and finding Luke has started winning over Percy, not in gradual betterment, but in a great leap one day. The USB may be destroyed, but his father’s intelligence is still a force to be reckoned with, and some heartstopping forays into father’s study and his computer uncovers the sales record of a new synthetic steroid that instantly increases muscle volume and blood flow, and a connection to the Castellan house.

Or perhaps he should start from him procuring the drug using his connections and giving it to a skeptic Percy, (No, Percy, we can’t just tell the authorities Luke is using it, nobody’s supposed to know about it- I swear Percy, nobody’s going to know if you use it. Okay, it’s not undetectable, but it’s currently not enlisted in any official doping test. The side effects? Er, here it is, let’s see, general numbness to pain, idiosyncratic heightened vulnerability in topical area of body… See? Nothing to worry about.) and father finding out later. Father was so incensed at Nico’s deception, he’d stooped to threatening Percy himself. Nico had had a hard time convincing Percy that this wasn’t some elaborate ploy to frame him.

Or perhaps he should start from the end, as with Homer and his questions, and tell her how, seeing Percy has used the Achilles’ Curse, Nico assumed erroneously that he’d gained Percy’s trust.

But as he reminisces he realizes how little there is to the tale except for his own folly. Percy’s not a god, however he may have served as one to his own adoration, he has no obligation to reward him, and all of Nico’s disappointment is his own. He has no more wish to talk of what transpired than to showcase his ugliest birthmark.

Reyna’s been watching him carefully as he struggled for his words. “I’ve done something I shouldn’t have. I don’t regret it, but I can’t stay in school, not camp half-blood or the Latin School. I can’t let myself be reminded of it, I just can’t.”

Reyna orchestras her life on commitments and burdens, and he knows she will understand that much part of that he does not say. She looks into his eyes, and asks in a voice that betrays the intensity of her gaze. “Nico, why didn’t you call me?”

Again, he doesn’t know what to say. He had thought of Reyna, but only in the context of reminiscing the things he’d be leaving behind. It had never occurred to him that their relationship was substantial enough to survive outside the school grounds. Though they had been in touch after the trip from two years ago; him checking up on her once every month or two, and her somewhat more often, and meeting every time there was a sport match or a mutual party between the two schools, he’d always thought he could perceive a sense of duty in her attention to him. Ah, but of course, for Reyna, everything is a duty, even…

Reyna hugs him, before he can acknowledge it and move away. In a moment, though, he returns it. He squeezes hard, not to stop her from seeing the wetness in his eyes, but to apologize for ever thinking he had but just one friend.

“You smell like pomegranates.” She says, and he huffs in her shoulder in amusement. Perhaps sometimes, he’s wrong to think the worst of himself.

Reyna leaves, as all good things do in time. She bequeaths him with a promise to call and visit more often, and today, Nico feels optimistic enough to believe it.

Charon is still there when he descends to the second floor. “That took long.” He says, eyes still glued to his PDA. “When I was your age it never took more than four minutes to blow my load.”

“Fuck you, we’re not like that.”

“Well you should, she’s got a nice ass. The kind that looks good with a strap-on.”

“What do you want.” Nico says, rolling his eyes. Charon likes freaking him out with sexual references. After the ‘angry dragon’, Nico doesn’t let him get on with the subject.

Charon adjusts the blue sunglasses he wears indoors like the ass he is. “He’ll give you the details.” He fishes something from his briefcase, and hands it to him.

Nico looks at the three files in his hand. He knows he shouldn’t be surprised, he knew what he was getting into. He had assumed his last mission would give him a sense of purpose to get on with life, though, and that hasn’t delivered yet.

He hadn’t wondered that he’d accepted his assignment so readily, nor that father had presumed his readiness, but now that he’s finally brought himself to think about the whole fiasco with Percy, he sees what his purpose had been, whether it was conscious or not. He’d breached his father’s trust, and he was working to regain it.

Is his debt paid? Or even if it is, can he justify his refusal with anything other than his own weakness of mind?

He thinks, and he thinks he knows the answer, but he is too used to not thinking about things. He adds another one to the list, and opens the top file.

 

 


	3. Monster

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's something like a glossary in the end notes for the mafia vernacular I used here, written because I recognize that our generation isn't Godfather friendly.

A child’s perception of time is a strange thing, but as with most strange things, its oddity is not registered before one loses one’s grip on it.

For Nico, the sense is forfeited gradually, during the course of over a year. It is not so now, but he still remembers when the events of a day would fizz drawn-out in his brain, bringing forward internal sensations that titillate so strong they seem to escape from the shell of his body. He still remembers when days stretched on as shadows stretch during the twilight hour.

He glimpses the beginning of twilight, as he reaches DOA studios. The garish orange light in the horizon hits the glass doors and morphs them briefly into the entrances of a temple, though the image of mosaic windows is dispelled as he opens them. Nobody acknowledges him as passes the lobby, not even Charon. His presence is nothing new; since that first job over a year ago, he’s frequented the place, mostly for assignments from father.

But he’s not here for his father today. He tries to look nonchalant as he makes his way to father’s office, as if he’s not here to steal information.

He reaches out for the doorknob, and nearly jumps out of his skin when the door opens from the inside and he walks into a tall, dark form.

“Your father’s not here.” Thanatos says, watching Nico trying not to sweat so profusely. The underboss has that effect on everyone.

“Oh, I didn’t know.” He lies. Father would have left a short while ago. It’s February, just before his stepmother leaves for south of France or whatever the place is this year, for her mother, and father takes a break from his workaholic tendencies to spend more time with her.

He moves sideways in an invitation to let Thanatos out, but the man doesn’t move. “How goes your search for the Doors of Death?” He asks.

Nico restrains a sigh, he’s been expecting that. “Good.”                                            

Thanatos looks unimpressed, and Nico relents. “I think I need more information.” He admits. “How can I look for something if I don’t really understand what it is?”

“There are some things that are better off not understood.”

“Well, that’s very helpful of you.” He says, and regrets it as Thanatos fixes his gold eyes on his. (The very ones that induced him to wonder about Hazel’s real parentage-not for long, he’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth- she looks nothing like their father, and eyes the color of gold are obviously very rare.) Thanatos is beautiful, but his beauty is something that should only be appreciated from afar.

“I’m just going to drop something off.” Nico says, pointing at the inside of the office, once again in invitation for the man to leave.

He waits until Thanatos disappears from his sight to close the door behind him.

Of the many assignments he’s been handed so far, finding the Doors of Death is the most daunting of all. The Doors are doors in only a figurative sense. In reality it’s a network that managed to free death row prisoners from all over the country. There’s been a huge police hush up, and the authorities are apparently going crazy trying to locate it. When he’d first heard of the fiasco, he’d been cocky sure that he’d be able to trace the Doors of Death. What the authorities are doing is trying to find the doors from the outside. He has leverage on them, the underworld is his turf, and there is nowhere he can’t go. But he’s been foiled in his attempts, as any lead he thinks he might have turns out to be a dead end.

Hence why he is here at all. He pauses in front of the huge filing cabinet that graces the back of the office. He supposes he could just ask for his father to tell him about the doors, but what he fears is not rebuff. He doesn’t want father to know that he is close to failing. Except for that first failed capture, he’s kept up a perfect mark; he’s done exactly as he’s bid.

He flips open the key pad lock. He’s figured out the combination years ago, when he’d been looking for the Achilles’ Curse. It’s a simple, yet an effective sieve for those who cannot be trusted- it’s father’s real name.

He types H-A-… The cabinet lock opens with a large click that has him freeze and cock his ears for anyone approaching. He holds his breathing in check as his hand hovers over the files.

He’s figured that if he found out more about the escapees, he could draw up a connection that would point him towards the right direction. He thinks over the names he knows, Alcyoneus, Medea, Orthea, Pasiphae, Porphyrion, Clytius, Sciron, Phineas …

Nico’s not sure why father seemingly shares a purpose with the general justice system, but there must be more to the ordeal, and he’s determined to find out.

He thumbs through the alphabetically sorted files and pulls out those he needs. The cabinet contains every single person who has the smallest connection with the underworld. There are the big shots; major mobsters, politicians on and off the family’s _payroll_ , and drug lords. There are the minor offenders; small town pimps, teenage gangster wanabees.

Later on, he’s not sure why he stopped at the section I, at that particular file. There must have been something bigger at the works, for blind curiosity alone could not have been enough tug his attention towards the one thing that could turn his world upside down.

At the moment though, all he thinks as he derives from the task at hand to reach towards an errant file, is that the name on the spine is an odd one. He rolls it out on his tongue quietly, feeling how it fluctuates, starting out aggressively, and then tapering on mild, after the p.

He opens the file with a mild, detached interest, which quickly vanishes.

It’s Bob.

But also not Bob, he sees. This man has not Bob’s lost, wondering gaze, but looks at him with a piercing look. This is Bob before the Lethe, the notorious underground ‘reeducation’ facility. He realizes he’s found Bob’s real name.

With clammy fingers he flips over the page, wishing with all his might that Bob is one of the minor offenders.

At the top of the list is patricide. And then murder, murder, murder…

 

It’s not yet completely dark as he walks back to his father’s house, his steps too brisk for his thoughts to catch up on him. His shadow elongates long in front of him, taunting the smallness of his presence. By the time he reaches the block where he lives, it’s merging with other shadows of houses, trees, and buildings, to create night itself, reminding him that every shadow is of the same element.

The French call this time of the day **_e_** _ntre chien et loup_ _,_ he remembers, from his French classes from camp half-blood. His inner voice enunciates the phrase in Piper’s perfect pronunciation, as it always does when he thinks of a French word. The time of the day when it is neither completely light or dark, and it is impossible to discern between a dog and a wolf. 

There’s a figure coming at him from the sidewalk, and he squints, but it is too dim to see who it is. 

Dog or wolf? Monster or man?

The figure, seeing him, comes to a stop, and Nico sees now who it is. Bob calls out his name, but Nico doesn’t answer, doesn’t slow down as he makes his way past him. 

===

There is a reason why, in every culture, the murder of man is more condemned than that of an animal, and the murder of kin more disparaged than that of a stranger. It is not a matter of the existence of souls or the weight of worthiness, or mere customs, but of the measure of one’s empathy. The more of one’s self one can see in his victim, the more atrocious the crime, and the less human the criminal.

Nico looks a lot like his father. The similarities go beyond facial features, or his complexion, gained from the time spent away from the Mediterranean sun of his childhood. There was a period of time, shortly after Bianca’s death, when he was yet young enough still to believe in father’s act of complete fortitude, and his apparent lack of mourning. He’d wished to be strong like father, strong enough to face the world with a straight face and not let on how painfully the splinters of his heart dug into his core, and so he’d practiced, in front of the bathroom mirror; that look of morose detachment, that unconcerned flick of his eyebrow, that thin lipped smile empty save for derision and macabre humor, the very countenance that has led the students of camp half-blood to dub Nico ‘creepy’. (He sees how fruitless it all was, for he sees now how much of an act it is for his father as well, but he doubts he will ever be able to regain Maria’s bright smiles he sees on himself in old family photos)

But what unsettles him is not exactly the atrocity of Bob’s crimes. He knows not to feel betrayed; he is still adamant in his belief that Bob has no more knowledge of his past life than Nico does of his own. In fact this new information should, more than anything, heighten their sense of good fellowship- Bob’s killed men and lost his memory, Nico’s lost his memory and killed men. 

No, what upsets him is not the fact that Bob used to be a monster, but that he _isn’t_ one now. 

He can’t put his finger on what just planted a little seed of doubt in his mind, not without disturbing the things he’s told himself. 

So instead he opts to immerse himself in his work. As soon as he arrives in his room he calls Minos to put his men on watch for the names he’s procured. He doesn’t have any soldatos of his own, not having any official rank in the Cosa Nostra, but all knows not to oppose him, not without specific orders from father, the Don himself. 

He doesn’t expect new info for a couple weeks at least, but Minos surprises him by contacting the next day, or night, to be precise. 

Nico’s in an office in DOA studios, listening to a report of the usual rounds around the managements (but thankfully not the bordellos- father is old fashioned when it comes to sex). The man reporting is young, only a few years older than Nico, and is new to the family, just having made his bones. He is eager to show his devotion by rattling off every single detail, and Nico is not sure if he should tell the man that he’s only just going through the procedure because father wants to show him the ropes.

When Nico’s phone rings (a disposable, low-end feature phone he’ll be abandoning as soon as this assignment’s over) and Minos asks him-sir, if you would please- to come down.

“Do I have to?” He asks a bit mystified. 

“I thought it would be prudent, sir. We’ve caught a rat.”

That gets his attention. He lowers his voice. “Does father know about this?”

“No, sir. Shall I call Thanatos right now?”

This surprises him. He doesn’t have any real power in the family. Minos is making a not so subtle statement that his allegiance is closer to him than to the underboss or the consigliere, that he considers Nico as the heavyweight. 

“I’ll tell him myself. Where do you need me?”

“The warehouse.” Minos has no need to elaborate. There’s a place not so far out from the city that the caporegime uses for many of his operations. This man, this turncoat, will not live to see the day of light. 

Nico cuts the connection. Important discussions are never held over the phone. There is less a chance of phones being rigged than conversations being recorded, and put to evidence in court. 

“You think some of the loan sharks are cutting back, that’s what you’re saying.” He says to the man in front of him as he puts on his jacket. 

“The books don’t match up, and we’ve…”

“Do what you have to do. Give them a little scare.”

 

Minos kisses his cheeks when he arrives at the warehouse with a bodyguard in tow, and Nico suppresses the overwhelming urge to back away- he doesn’t like physical contact, especially from a greasy middle aged man. 

Out of the three caporegimes, Minos is the most influential, but that is not why Nico chose him to undertake the task. The man has been openly trying to get in his good books, and Nico supposes he should award his act of servility. 

Minos might be powerful than Rhadamanthys or Aiakos, but the other two caporegimes hold their own well enough. Minos and Rhadamanthys are brothers with open distaste for one another, though they are both Sicilian, and have the Omerta engraved to the core of their bones. 

Half of the warehouse is separated by a thin wall with a door, beyond which will be the turncoat they’ve caught. Nico gestures towards the door, raising an eyebrow, and Minos fills him in. They’d been watching the escapees under his orders when Midas was spotted. They’d still have waited out to gauge more of his intentions had Midas, the turncoat, recognized the man on watch. They caught him and his son trying to make a run.

“Did you talk to the watch?” Nico asks.

“Yes, sir. It’s my fault, for thinking it would be better to station a more seasoned soldier not a complete newbie. I didn’t think any of the escapees would recognize him- they’ve all been locked up for more than a decade.” Minos stops to give him a shifty look. “Shall I make him _pay_?”

Nico gives an impatient wave of his hand. There are always causes that need a sacrificial lamb, there’s no need to be wasteful out of impatience.

“Midas, he’s not really one of ours, is he?”

“No, not of the family. But he’s dealt exclusively with us, and he has family protection.” Minos smiles coldly. “Or had.”

“Dealt?”

“Gold, sir. Gems as well, but mostly gold. He’s our top dealer with the South African branch.”

Gem smuggling is arguably the most lucrative of the family’s businesses. They deal extensively with Myanmar and Afghanistan, as well as South Africa, by tons a year. Even with the added expense of bribing producer country governments and local warlords, the family rakes in profit by the millions. 

“I’m sorry to say I got started without you, the rat has a busy mouth. But I saved you the last, I thought you might like to question him yourself,” continues Minos, gesturing towards the door with a small bow which is obsequious enough to be considered sarcastic, if Nico didn’t know any better. “I did not know what you were looking for.”

Nico’s bodyguard (whom Nico doesn’t remember the name of, they change so often) opens the door out for him. The metallic smell of blood hits him just as he walks through the door, and he breathes through his mouth as two of Midas’ men, who’ve been watching guard over the prisoners, move aside for him to take in the sight. 

A pudgy man with grayish white hair, whom Nico takes is Midas, is strapped onto a chair, bound by his hand and feet while a burly figure with dark curly hair, presumably the son, Lit, is prostrate on the floor. 

Nico motions for his bodyguard, and the man turns Lit over. He’s wearing a bloody sleeveless shirt, and looks to be about college age, with a handsome face that is marred by old scars. He’s obviously unconscious, and on close examination is bleeding from several stumps on his left hand, where he’s missing fingers. 

Standard procedure, then.

He looks up, and sees Midas smirking derisively at him.

“What, you’re hiring middle school kids now? Starting a Mafia summer camp?”

Nico’s face is not well known in the underworld, even in the family itself, as he operates more or less behind the scenes. He reluctantly lets the gibe at his age pass. He’s always been small for his age, in both girth and height, and puberty has, despite his most fervent wishes, brought no real miracle.

“Now listen. I don’t think you understand just what situation you’re in.” He takes a step towards the man, with the quiet force of an animal of prey. He may be small, but he more than makes up for it in intimidation. “You’re going to tell me everything you know, and your boy here might just make it out alive.”

Midas looks infuriatingly unfazed. “You’re saying you’re gonna kill me whether I help you or not. Right now I don’t see why I should.”

Seeing Nico’s eyes narrow, he snorts derisively. “You think I give a goddamn fuck what you do to that spoiled brat?”

This isn’t the reaction Nico was expecting, and Minos whispers in his ear. “He has a history of selling off his daughter. We’d hoped he might feel somewhat more…parental over the son, but so far he’s been uncooperative.”

Nico frowns and pushes him away. Minos should have given him all the relevant info beforehand. In occasions like this, he likes to exert complete control- like a king, if you will.

Midas disgusts him. In the Nosa Costra, family is _everything_. Your family holds more than the law, your beliefs, or money, even your own life. For him, family, and his loyalty towards them are the rule of conduct, and Midas’ actions are inconceivable in his book.

“Then let’s put this another way.” He pulls out his pocket knife and flicks it open to reveal all six inches of the black blade. “Either you tell me who broke out the escapees, or you don’t get to say anything at all.”

Midas eyes the blade, mere inches away from his mouth. 

“I’m not going to kill you right now. You see, that’s not my favorite way of conduct. The tongue, it bleeds out too quickly, it ends too quickly. No, I’m going to cauterize it, just so you don’t drown in your blood.” Nico smiles, the creepiest one he can muster, which is saying a lot. “Then, I’m going to bring you a piece of paper and a pen, and if you don’t cooperate then, I’m going to make sure you match your son, a little father-son bonding time, if you will.” He says, moving the blade down to tap at Midas’ fingers. “Only this time, I’m going to make sure you’re conscious for every minute of it.”

The fear is now evident in Midas’ face, but he’s not going down without a fight. “As if you would, sissy boy.”

“Is that a name? I don’t think so. Open him up.”

One of Minos’ men grabs Midas’ head. The other one follows with a crowbar and goes for the jaw. Midas’ eyes go saucer-wide, and he starts thrashing every loose part of his body. He screams something incoherent, and Nico waits a couple seconds before motioning for the men to release him. 

“Sorry, didn’t quite catch that.”

Midas has chocked on his own saliva while screaming, and is coughing, eyes red, his face scrunched in utter loathing. 

“I don’t know the name.” He says upon recovering. “I fucking swear I don’t… fuck, stop. Stop.” He screams as Nico motions for the men. 

“They called her the Mother.”

“Their mother? Whose?”

Midas shakes his head violently. “No, _the_ Mother. That’s all I know. I swear on fucking god.”

Nico is nonplussed, but looking at Minos he sees the unmistakable sign of recognition fleet across his face. 

“Thank you.” He nods to Midas, and the man collapses in upon himself in relief. “As a sign of my gratitude, I’ll make sure it’s all over quick.”

He walks out through the door, and calls out over the sound of Midas cursing. “Kill him.”

“And the son?” Minos asks him after the firing dies down. 

“Let him go. Keep an eye on him, though. He might get some half assed idea of revenge.” He says, trying to keep his voice under control. 

He’s never actually had to torture anyone before, though he has witnessed it twice. His heart is beating as loudly as the gun fires, so afraid he was that Midas would put out to the end. 

He keeps his back resolutely to the wall. He wishes they’d close the door. He’d order them to, if he didn’t think they’d gauge how reluctant he is to see the corpse. Sometimes he wishes the monsters (the men) would just…disappear after they’re finished. Burst in golden flecks, perhaps. 

It’s okay, it’s just a monster, he tries to tell himself, just like he always does. Midas is, isn’t he? He sold his own daughter. He’d laughed as his son was tortured. 

A monster, like Bob? Another voice points out.

“Who’s the Mother?” He asks Minos, louder than he’s meant to. His ears still ring from the shootings. 

“I think you should ask the Don yourself, sir. I’d prefer not to be presumptuous.”

Nico nods, still trying to find his repose. “Is there anything else you’ve found out? Another lead?”

Later on, much later on, he would have ample time in the darkness to ponder over Minos’ response, how his voice lowered a just a fraction lower as he answered, as if articulating something carefully practiced. 

“I may have found a connection to someone. Name of Geryon. He operates in Texas. My men could take you, sir, if you’d like.”

“Yeah, sure.” He’s glad to hear he sounds perfectly calm now. He concentrates on breathing in and out. “No, wait,” he says as his brain catches up. “I have to go do the rounds in Vegas in a couple of days- check up on the casinos and the hotel managements. Just call me up a bit later.”

“Of course, sir.” Minos reaches inside his suit to retrieve a business card and hands it to him. 

Nico reads it, and pockets it.

 

===

 

The adrenalin in his veins makes for some interesting dreams.

There are files and guns and his black knife that swirl around a sea of blood that changes to golden dust. They sink into the gold, and then dirt sprouts them back up as skeletal arms, that are connected to Spartus, skeletal warriors, and they bow to him, call him their king, only now they’re ghosts, ephemeral. King of Ghosts, King of Nothing, King of the Forgotten, they whisper, and start to group together, growing more and more solid until it’s just one figure, looking straight at him. Bryce looks at him, and Nico backs away. Bryce backs away as well, his dogtag glittering. He steps forward, and Bryce does the same. He reaches out, and Bryce follows suit, their hands almost touching, and then his fingers touch a smooth surface and Nico realizes he’s looking in a mirror. He pushes away, and the mirror breaks into a thousand pieces at his feet. A broom comes into view, sweeping them up, and he sees it’s Bob, smiling. Only his smile is that of Midas, and it’s not really Bob, and in lieu of a broom it’s a spear, taller than Nico, coming up, up, up to strike. There’s his pocket knife in his hand only getting bigger and bigger until it’s a sword, and it rests comfortingly heavy in his hand but as his knife grew so did Bob-not-Bob and it’s towering over him and he slashes and thrusts, and the giant explodes into a thousand A4 files that rain upon him, cutting him sliver by sliver. One stops in front of his eyes, and it’s his, his file, and even as it cuts into his hand and is stained red, he can read the words: Murder- Octavian Augur / Murder- Bryce Lawrence/ Murder- Bianca di Angelo/ Murder-Maria di Angelo

 

He wakes abruptly. He’s sweaty and his heart is beating suddenly too fast, as it does when waking up to a nightmare and he takes a moment, watching the grey brocade curtains of his bedroom window filtering sunlight sporadically. His phone, the reason he woke up in the first place, stops ringing as he finally wakes enough to do something about it.

He goes to voicemail and Charon’s bored voice tells him there’s another assignment for him, and as Nico seems to be so _busy_ , (in a tone that says he highly doubts as such) he’ll have to come down tomorrow himself. 

A sliver of the floor is warm when he stumbles to his feet, warmed by the weak afternoon sun. Afternoon. He came back at the brink of dawn, didn’t he? And then he dreamt of Bryce, and that Bob was somehow a monster. No, that part wasn’t a dream. 

The bathroom is deliciously cool, and he leans against the sink for a short while to feel it against his skin. He splashes water on his face, which sends shivers down the length of his spine. The mirror shows him his usual face; pale, thin, and rendered even more unattractive by the dripping moisture. Today it shows something more. He blinks to see another face, blurry and residual, as if his dream had burned an after image into his retina.

He pushes away the sliding mirror door, unable to face the implications of what is obviously just a nightmare. The door glides away to reveal the medicine cabinet behind. Toothpastes, razor blades, bandages, and hidden behind them all, a small bottle of Prozac. 

The Prozac is, as Nico sees it, a relic of the past. He’s stronger now, he’s not that traumatized little boy anymore. Why he is unable to tear his eyes away from it he cannot fathom.

He pulls the mirrored panel shut. But his hand is wet, and the mirror slips, slamming into the left frame. The crash reverberates in the bathroom, and leaves a physical aftermath of a hair-thin crack in the mirror. He cautiously runs his index finger along the fracture, and quickly pulls away, feeling something sharp imbed itself.

He pulls away a tiny glass fragment with his other index and thumb, and then watches blood bloom from under his skin. He presses onto it, feeling an odd satisfaction that’s something like release. He keeps it up for several more seconds, blood seeping underneath his thumb’s nail, until shame slinks in, and he washes it all off under the tab.

A broken mirror, and his hands bloody.

Nico is a pretty superstitious person, not that he isn’t aware that in this age of reason, superstition is synonymous with ignorance. But what troubles him is not the broken mirror itself, but how, even in a short frame of time, prophetic his dream is turning out to be. And the last part of the dream was a file with his name on it.

 

He gives in to temptation.

He reads for a bit, waiting for the time when father would leave his office, but Gibbon’s ironic prose isn’t engrossing enough, not today, so he texts Hazel, asking her of menial things. She doesn’t answer, and Nico, despite berating himself over the extent of his social anxiety, still rereads his own texts, wondering if the lack of abbreviations make it obvious he’s unaccustomed to having someone to text. 

It’s an easy enough matter, seeing he’s already succeeded in an identical expenditure several days before, to sneak into father’s office and open the filing cabinet. The door is locked this time, but since when were locked door obstacles for him?

It’s somewhat less easy to make his hands reach into the D section.

He hesitates, bracing himself for what he will find there. Thanatos said there are things better not understood. Well, Nico knows there are things better unknown. He doesn’t need to know everything father does as the undisputed lord of the underworld (at least of the west coast). He didn’t need to learn Maria died, not when he’d managed to block it out, not when father managed to block it out with extensive therapy from the Lethe. He didn’t need to know Bob was once a monster to be slayed. 

Bob. 

Now that he’s here, he finds there’s a surreal quality to it all, him following a dream. It’s as if he’s on a quest, following a prophecy-the object and the means, inserted in gibberish by a higher power- like the heroes of yore.

It feels as though he’s still in the dream, and it feels as though, as irrational as it is, as he saw his own file in a dream, so he had with Bob’s file.

So he goes for the section I instead, as if seeing the file again would diminish the horror of it. 

Ia-Ib-…

He can feel his pulse in his fingers, thrumming painfully, as he hits Jackson. He goes back, now much more frantic. And again, and again. 

Finally he has to conclude. Bob’s file is not there.

For one split second he fools himself into joy, that he’s imagined the whole thing. Then he grasps the situation. 

He clicks shut the cabinet, where men are cut into black little letters and formed again as monsters. Whether his file is there or not, it’s no longer important. What is important now is that he is not here tomorrow for Charon to give him a file. He walks out of DOA studios, and makes several calls, to Jules-Albert and his bodyguards, and finally to Alecto, the consigliere, telling them where he’s going. None are suspicious, they assume he’s going there to do his job. After the calls, he drops his phone and jumps on it, breaking the cheap device in half.

Looking out in the back of the car, Bianca’s grave is a huge expanse. They have never found the body, so the whole of the Mojave is a testimony to his loss. 

Is it true, he wonders. Will he be handed Bob’s file tomorrow? Perhaps his assignment had nothing to do with Bob. Perhaps Bob’s file is to be given to another kid, naïve enough to believe he’s playing vigilante. But it doesn’t matter, not really, because he can’t stop Bob’s fate, can’t beg father for mercy without crumbling every last bit of lie he’s built up for himself. 

He’d called them monsters, those faces in the cabinet, but they can’t be, or else he’s a monster himself. He remembers how empty he felt when he killed Bryce, and knows what he’d been void of, and what he lacks even now. They’re men, every single one of them, that he killed or had killed, and the absence of guilt, the realization of it, comes at him like acid, stripping away his fortitude. Bryce was a monster because he was a psychopath, with no empathy for others- how is he so different if he feels so little remorse?

It does not matter they deserved to be killed, of course not, not when everyone deserves to die, it is their birthright. He’d been so sure of the insignificance of his own life that he took it to believe it of others’ as well. 

He cannot save Bob without admitting that the murders he committed were, in fact, evitable. If Bob, with his past record, could be a good man with some memory loss, so could Octavian and Midas and Thorn and all the others. Bryce could be saved, and he is the one who murdered him.

He can see neon lights appearing in the horizon, much like a mirage. It’s twilight, and the lines are blurring, between dog and wolf, between monster and man, between hero and murderer, until there are none at all, until every entity stands with a terrible lucidity, and there is nothing at all but himself, and the rest of the world. 

He’s not a hero, and they’re not monsters. It’s not even the other way around. It’s only Us and Them, divided by nothing save for self-awareness and animal selfishness. 

He wants Jules-Albert to stop, so he can ask Bianca for forgiveness, but it is a foolish thought, the dead cannot speak to him, and they drive the whole 5 hours without stopping. 

They get a suite at a hotel father has in some investments, and Nico tells his guards to enjoy the bar. He makes sure they are thoroughly occupied before quietly heading out on his own. He hunches up a little in his black Arc’teryx windbreaker, he misses his aviator jacket.

Jason Grace once told him all he did was run away. The reason he was so angry was because it was true. 

His steps take him along an unfamiliar path to a familiar destination. People think, when running away, they’ll go somewhere completely new. This is almost never the case. People are never truly free, they are bound by habits and their past selves, and will always strive for familiarity. 

There is only one place that isn’t marred by loss, that he can remember having a facsimile of happiness in.

In another world, he can go anywhere on earth he wants with as little cost as his health. In another world mortality loses meaning for him, and rid of the fear of death and the unknown, the underworld is as good a place to escape as any. In another world, but this is not it.

For the second time of his life, he steps into the lobby of the Lotus Hotel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The entirety of my knowledge on the Mafia comes from the Godfather, so unless both Mario Puzo and Wikipedia are very much mistaken,
> 
> La Cosa Nostra- Literally 'our thing.' The Italian-American Mafia has no formal name. This is how its members usually refer to it.  
> Soldato-'Soldier.' The main workers of the family and usually part of a regime.  
> Consigliere-The boss' counselor, and the 'number three', after the underboss.  
> Caporegime- Commands a crew of soldiers and reports directly to the boss or the underboss.  
> Omerta- Literally 'manliness'. Put simply, it's a 'code of silence'. 
> 
> Or, if you don't really care, just look at this pretty diagram.  
> http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/Mafia_family_structure_tree.en.svg/2000px-Mafia_family_structure_tree.en.svg.png
> 
> As a side note, Minos died in Sicily in the original myths, so I'm prob not taking too much of a liberty here, saying he's Sicilian.
> 
> Next stop- Nico meets Will.


	4. Butterflies

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Will makes Nico stay for three days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The 'lotus leaves' explained here are closer to Homer's version, or the movie verse (if you want to remember that piece of atrocity) than the book verse.That is, they're straight-out drugs.
> 
> I've very little idea how rehab really works. All my knowledge on it comes from several memoirs and novels I've read on the subject.

 

'I'm not going to enter any new bondages'

'Don't boast, while the gods are listening,' he said.

-Lady Chatterley's Lover

 

 

He’s seeing something. The ceiling. Why is it white, how can anything be so white, and so still.

Too white, and too still. Where are the colorful blinking lights and the incessant sounds? His whole being is scraped, as if by sandpaper, and he’s left raw and red. Where is it? He needs the fizziness, needs it to cover him up.

Need- it’s a foreign sentiment. He does not need, does not want anything. When is the last time he’s _needed_ something.

Time. If possible, the concept is even more foreign. He can hear his own breath- in and out as an organic tick tock. No, but time isn’t a tick-tock, a pendulum in one extreme then the other, it’s a constantly flowing force, and now that the dam has broken, it comes rushing in, too fast for him to really acknowledge except in bits.

Men, grabbing him by his arms, hoisting him out to the cold air.

His head flopping back, too distracted by Huntress in the desert night sky to fight back. Beautiful.

A low strumming from the leather seat. White noise- again, too white. His fingers tapping compulsively on the bulletproof fiber panels to emulate the constant sounds of the casino.

A voice. A question, half-concerned, half-clinical. Him, turning to see who it is that’s sitting next to him. Hair tied back teacher style. Face crinkled. The consigliere, Alecto Dodds.

A memory, nearly buried. A girl and boy, rid of their past.

Not the Lethe.

Fingers, scrabbling for the door handle. Clumsy, thin ones that slip. His fingers. And his voice, too, that’s filling the small space of the car with demented mutterings.

Not the Lethe, Alecto. No.

And then what? Did they drag him into this place? He remembers in little dots but cannot connect them.

The white sheets covering him are scratchy, and the air smells septic. When was all that? Yesterday? An hour ago? A week? Time, now brought back to him, lies in a helpless puddle. Staring at the ceiling, the lull seems a pure physical force, driving him. He must move. He has to get out of here.

He swings himself over the bed, and nearly retches as nausea catches up. Fumbling to his feet, he sees a water jug and a cup. He meant only to calm his stomach down, but the moment the water touches his lips he’s pouring the whole cup down his throat. Two more cups follow, until he feels as ill again.

He opens the door leading out of the white room and realizes his feet are cold, and looking down he sees them bare. Upon further inspection he realizes he’s wearing his own clothes at least. He’s tearing the room apart, looking for his boots when someone enters the room.

“You’re up.” The woman is dark haired, smallish and looks to be in her late twenties. She’s carrying a chart in her arm, and though she’s in casual clothing she has an ID necklace around her neck and an authoritative posture that have Nico nail her down as part of the staff of… wherever he is.

“Where are my shoes?” His throat feels dry and foreign, and his voice comes out as an imitation of a raspy growl

She looks a bit taken aback at Nico digging at the empty closet, but points towards the bed. “There are slippers under your pajamas. I see you didn’t change into them.”

Nico’s not sure what she’s talking about, but he looks under the rumpled sheets to see a yellow-striped hospital-gown, and beneath them a thin pair of slippers.

“You missed breakfast, but I’ll talk to the kitchen staff to get you a little something. It’s never good to be on an empty stomach after taking meds.”

He ignores her nonsensical words, focusing on the words on the yellow stripes- ARRCA. Not the Lethe, of course. His mind is returning sluggishly. He should have known that the moment he opened his eyes. If this place were the Lethe, he would already have been- no, best not to think of it. He’s wondering what the initials stand for when a word cuts through. “Meds?”

“From yesterday.” Nico furrows his eyebrows and she smiles in a faintly pitying way that thoroughly annoys him. “You’ll get more after talking to the doctor. And after you get your blood tested.”

“In fact, you’ll have to hurry up a bit if you want to clean up. Your appointment’s due in less than an hour.” She continues, looking at her wristwatch. “If there’s anything you need for the bathroom just ask the guys at the front desk-“

“Where are my boots?” Nico cuts through. This might not be the Lethe, but he’s adamant in his insistence to leave. He cannot stand a second more of this stillness. He moves his limbs in tick-like movements and squeezes his hands into fists to make up for it.

She frowns, and he sneers at her evident attempt to intimidate him. “I think they’re under the bed?” She says nonetheless.

They are, and while she prattles on ignored, Nico coerce his fingers into lacing them. His hands feel out of sync, and the shoelaces keep slipping between his fingers when he attempts to tighten them.

He sidesteps her towards the door into the hallway, and tries to navigate to the door. There are posters all around; teenagers lying down on the grass, a kid smiling with an older man, their heads stamped with words advertising help. The walls waver from the corners of his sight, fizzy and pulsating.

There’s a hand on his arm, and he turns to see the woman sternly telling him to come back to his room. He gives her a look, and the hand is snatched back in an instant.

Not waiting to see if she will follow, he takes random turns, aiming for brighter corners, all the while feeling the insides of his windbreaker. As he finally reaches the front desk he finds his pocket knife and his wallet are still there.

His relief is short-lived. The woman must have called security. He eyes the two men standing there, scanning them down. Armed? Possibly with tasers but not likely, not in a small medical facility like this. He sidles towards the door, and is stopped as the man closest to him makes as if to physically drag him back in. His instincts kick in, apparently attentive though the rest of him is not. The next second the guard is on the floor, and Nico’s hands are behind his back, the other guy pushing him forward by the back of his neck.

They let him go soon enough, assured he won’t cause any more trouble, but there’s already a small crowd by the time they get him to tell them what’s his problem.

“I’m going home.” He says, voice low, his hands itching towards his pocketknife. Crowds unnerve him even more than large men. If he hadn’t been so out of it, he would’ve taken both the guards out easily, he knows it.

He can’t concentrate on the individual faces in the crowd, not without a migraine, but he squints and sees there are several plain clothed staff and half a dozen teenagers out to gawk at him, and Nico can feel his flight or flee instinct emerging again. A woman behind the front desk comes to him straightaways with papers to sign and he realizes he’s misinterpreted the situation. Actually he wasn’t thinking at all. He’s imagined he’d be detained for trying to leave, when there was no way they could do so. The guards wouldn’t have dragged him back, they were merely there in case he made a scene, which, he realizes he just did. It was a stupid, needless assault on someone who hadn’t even touched him.

Flicking through the forms brought to him he recognizes his own signature along with Alecto’s. He flares with resentment at the consigliere and the facility. How dare they think the papers binding when he’d been so out of it he can’t even remember signing them? Signing the last page, he looks more closely at the words.

“I think you got something wrong here.” He hands over the paperwork and points a bit above the bottom of the page.

She reads it, then says in a careful sort of voice, as if Nico’s going to attack her as well for disclaiming his words, “Since you’re underage your legal guardian signed you up for detox followed by a 28 day inpatient program. It’s been paid up front.”

“No, not that.” He says irritably, already shifting, ready to leave. “The date, it says September. You’re using an old form.”

The woman just looks confusedly at him. “See, look.” He points again, and this time he sees that the dates aren’t too late, they’re _early_.

He looks outside, past the glass doors. The greenery has a shrubby, dry look to it that is consistent to his knowledge–it’s early spring. He follows, almost enthralled. The guards make no movement at all this time as he leaves the building, out to the sun.

Yes, it must be spring. The sun is warm, just short of hot. The grass is slightly yellowish, and a few dry leaves are scattered here and there. There’s a couple of magnolia trees out on the curb, and he can see them late in bloom, tips of their skin-like petals tinged ochre. Then again, they are all dual signs, aren’t they?

He continues, consistent in a jolting manner, to the front gates. He passes a bright yellow sign near it that says in black letters, Apollo Residential Rehabilitation Centre for Adolescents, with an orange logo of a sun rising over the head of a child with hands stretched out towards the sky. There’s the number of the centre under it, and Nico sees he’s in L.A. The better for father to keep him under watch, he supposes.

They must be calling Alecto right now. The thought tenses him, ready to run. But how? He can see a few other buildings, some that look like office buildings, and one that looks like a shop. This place isn’t the high streets, but is not so out of town to be suburban.

He’ll take a bus, he decides. There’s bound to be one near, they always seem to be everywhere, getting in the way of traffic. He’ll go somewhere louder, to chase away this horrible _monotony_ that keeps oppressing him, and then he’ll figure something out. He looks in his wallet. He doesn’t have any cash, still his debit card is there, and the Lotus Casino membership card as well. Do buses accept cards? He has honestly no idea, he has close to no experience at all of public transportation, but he thinks maybe not

The shop, a pastry shop of all things, is closed, but he sees someone passing by, who, with one look seems to deem him capable of mugging him in the middle of daylight, and tries to cross the street without looking directly at him.

Nico confronts him anyway for directions, and after a few wrong turns and a quarter of an hour finds an ATM. He feeds his black card to the machine. It’s pushed pack out again, with the words ‘Error: invalid account’ on its screen

He tries; twice more, and both times the card is pushed back with the same message. He watches the digitally rendered letters in a dumb miasma, though he’s already gathered how father must have closed his account.

There’s only one place to go, the very place that he’s run from.

A wave of nausea comes over him, and he takes a step backwards. This only proceeds to heighten his crest of dizziness, and he stumbles, his legs a foreign muddle. He would have fallen on his face had not someone caught him.

“You idiot. What are you doing, walking around?”

Nico wants to pull away. He hates physical contact. But he can’t seem to be able to move except in violent tremors. His sight has been curtailed to black and white television static, and he doesn’t dare open his mouth in fear of throwing up. Nico finds himself leaning on the block of warmth, relying on the support.

“Take this.”

The words are muddled, and seem to take a long time to reach his brain, and by the time he manages to make his hand and arm to make even a twitch, his lips are being forced open by something small and hard.

It’s gum. He doesn’t chew it, but sucks on it, though it’s still an effort to swallow his own spit afterwards. It’s supposedly sweet, but to him, at the moment, it tastes like tar and mud.

“You need sugar. This should keep you alive and alert for a few more minutes.”

It’s either a minute or an hour that he comes to enough to push away the warmth to stand on his two feet. In the process he realizes he’s had an arm wrapped around him.

He jerks back and turns to face the person, hitting the ATM in the process.

The man facing him is indistinguishable from the many Creamsicles that populate the areas around D.O.A studios, in the wealthy parts of west L.A.; skin tanned nearly orange and hair bleached nearly white from too much sun, conventionally attractive and knowing it. He’s wearing an ID card, like the woman in the room before.

Nico would be flushing if he had any energy left to do so. He contents to stare daggers at the man for daring to touch him.

But instead of going nervous or hostile, the man smiles easily and says, “I’d ask you how long it’s been since you’ve eaten anything, but I’m guessing you don’t know, huh?” He continues conversationally when Nico doesn’t respond. “Low blood sugar’s more dangerous than most people think.

“ _How did I know?”_ The man lowers his voice in an imitation of Nico’s voice, and Nico bristles. “Well, I’ll have you know you’re not the only patient who’s come here for using lotus leaves, though they’re rarer than most. And I can tell you, it’s very dangerous for you to be walking around like this.”

“You’ve read my records.” Nico says, as hotly as he can manage. It’s not much; the world feels ready to cave in, everything feels so real, much more real than anything had for a long time, enough to go all the way around and turn surreal.

“No.” The man’s face turns, for the first time, serious. “I saw the symptoms. Loss of perception of time. That’s the most obvious symptom of lotus leaves addiction.”

Nico realizes this man was in the crowd at the reception area. He wants to back away, though his back is to the ATM. He’s mortified, turned small and dirty like a child seen throwing a tantrum. He doesn’t want one of the crowd to be talking to him like this, he’s learned at camp half-blood, the crowd doesn’t like him; they smile nervously at you then turn away, ready to stop hiding their disgust and derision. “I’m not an addict.”

Nico’s ready for him to be condescending, or sternly reprimanding. The man only shrugs. “Whatever you are, you shouldn’t be pulling off any more stunts.”

“I’ll do what I have to do.”

The man rolls his eyes at him. “Fine, Death Boy. If you want to get yourself killed-“

“Do _not_ call me _Death Boy!_ ”

The man does something unexpected. He laughs. “Okay, Nico, I won’t.” He turns his face mock-serious. “But you owe me at least three days of rest in detox. Starting _now_.”

It’s been years since anyone has bossed him around like that, father’s orders are always distant and dismissive, even when coming directly from his face. Almost everyone else are submissive, confusing fear for respect. It reminds him of Bianca, the way this man laughs over Nico’s heated anger, and orders him about like one would an errant child. It’s different, of course. He shouldn’t confuse some occupational duty as general concern. He’s learned the hard way never to assume people care.

And yet, maybe he likes feeling like an errant child. The man’s face is kind, and his smiles are the ones that linger long after the reason for them are gone. The world is fuzzy that the smiles are the only things he can afford to concentrate on right now. Yes, he likes feeling like a child, he supposes. This way, he can pretend his mistakes are permissible, something accountable with his gentle chastising, and that the responsibilities that have keeled him over to this hole, the decision of life and death, has never weighed on his shoulders. So instead of lashing out, he asks, “Three days?” In a dim way he perceives that this is the lotus leaves thinking, that he should be pushing the man aside and leaving for the streets right now. (His father’s place, he still fears to even consider.)

“Three days. That’s how long it takes for the drugs to go out of your system. Give us three days and you’ll forget why you even used in the first place.”

“I don’t want a place here.” Nico snarls, old habits finally kicking in again through the cloud. “I don’t belong. No one wants me-“ He cuts off. He sounds pathetic, fourteen again, leaving camp half-blood, his hurt showcased in anger, secretly begging for someone to tell him to stay.

“Why are you doing this?” Nico asks.

What he does not ask is: Why do you care? Why are you here, when the others were ready to let me go? Why would you hold me when nobody has touched me like that in years?

The man bobs on his feet, thinking. Nico waits, thinking that the weight of his life is oscillating with the man’s movements, ready to fall and rise. He reads the name on the man’s ID. Will solace. It sounds like some badly thought out joke from a book. I, Will Solace. _I will solace you_.

He starts a bit, tick-ish, like an addict, he supposes, when Will opens his mouth, as if his silly, corny thought has been spoken aloud.

“You have friends.” Will says. “Or at least people who would like to be your friend.”

You don’t know me, he thinks. You know nothing at all. You’re just part of a crowd; happy, ignorant, unconcerned.

But he’s too weak. He’s always been weak, just like his father says. As the lotus leaves are saying to him now, _you’ve always been content to follow orders from those he loved, Bianca, Percy, Father. Without an anchor, you’re lost. You need someone else, whose needs and wants you’ll attend to prior to yours. At this point you don’t care who it is, as long as he’ll let you._

He takes a step forward, and falters, ready to fall. Will catches him, his hands warmer than the October sun, and trying not to melt under them, Nico lets Will lead the way back down the pavement.

===

Nico’s three days are something awful, he’s oozy, coltish, and sick. It’s an effort to open his eyes, let alone get out of bed. Nico’s eight months at the Lotus Hotel felt like weeks. His three days feel longer.

But they pass, and he learns that Will was right to a point. The stillness no longer bothers him, and the need that caught up his frayed thoughts is gone. Nico cannot even properly remember the feeling anymore.

It’s after he’s been moved to rehab, to another room and different programs, that he learns that Will lied, though, about why he asked Nico to stay.

“That’s the closest ATM from here,” says Dakota, his roommate, when he asks about it. They’re going to the TV room after Nico’s first group therapy, and Nico’s searched for something to say in response to Dakota’s constant jittering. Dakota’s here for alcohol and e and speed and other things, and he carries nervous energy around, even as he’s sober. “The workers, the ones that care, anyway, they check there first when patients run out on them.”

“Oh.” Nico tries not to let his disappointment show, feeling stupid. What had he imagined, that Will has deemed him special, after watching him for two minutes? “Did you go there, too?”

Dakota guffaws. “Fuck, no, dude. Don’t want my old man putting me somewhere like from last time. This place is pretty chill. Low maintenance, you know?”

From his group therapy session and Dakota, Nico’s learnt that there are two types of in-patients here; the first are the frat boy, trust fund type kids who start using out of tedium, and whose obstacles are social obligations and interference from family members. The second are the street kids, who usually end up here after OD’ing, and whose only obstacles are money, and possibly, their mortality.

Dakota clearly belongs to the former group. Nico thinks he belongs to neither, as always. He’s still sure he’s not an addict, whatever his therapist says. He’s aware that it looks that way, that he’s spent eight months constantly high on lotus leaves, so much that he can’t remember eating or sleeping or going through other normal body functions, but he’s never really wanted the concentrated fizzes the leaves bring. He’d merely deplored reality, and the hotel had seemed like the best alternative. He has no pretensions, however, that the others have clearly labelled him as some street junkie. If the lash-out at the guards hadn’t confirmed their views, his self-introduction he’s been forced to do just before- _I dropped out of high school, worked for my dad for a while, then ran away from home. I’ve been using ever since_ -certainly would have.

“What’s it like, lotus leaves?” Dakota asks when Nico doesn’t answer. Nico thinks, choosing the right answer. He used to think he was bad with words. It’s still true, but he’s come to see how he takes time deciding on the exact, right words when others spurn them out unfiltered. Dakota seems to think Nico’s ignoring him again and babbles on. “I’m up for using everything once, but what’s the point if you don’t remember getting your shit? They say all you do is watch kiddies shows and wake up without remembering anything. Is that what happens?”

It’s true that you remember very little. That’s why lotus leaves don’t work well as a street drug-it’s rare for someone to use long enough to build an addiction for them. “Sort of. You need to see all these bright lights and movements or you can’t stand it. That’s why casinos keep dealing with the stuff- you keep paying to see things move, so you keep betting.” Or in his case, keep playing video games.

Dakota prattles on, about something crazy and stupid he allegedly did at a party, and Nico tries to listen, but unable to find the right places to insert expletives, lapses back into silence, his attention meandering. They pull apart at the TV room. Nico could tell his presence wasn’t very welcome, even to Dakota, who’s the sort of person that will talk to a wall, just to fill the silence.

After detox, he’s spent most of his time here in the community room. He’s had a lax schedule for a few days, with a single appointment with a doctor, and several sessions of personal therapy with Kayla, his primary therapist. She signed him up now in groups for codependency and eating disorders. He’s told very little about himself to Kayla. He’s learnt from the Lethe that baring yourself, letting someone take a bit of it, however bad, can be both precarious and agonizing.

He bypasses the TV where Dakota’s changing the channel dizzyingly fast, and the board game table with all the missing pieces to the book shelf in the corner.

The Centre’s collection is meagre in both quantity and quality, but Nico’s found a thick, once-hardcover book with its cover ripped off, with a stamp of a non-local library on the first cover. He settles into a lumpy old chair with it, turning so that he isn’t facing anyone, and thumbs through to find his page. It’s a book of Greek mythology, with pictures of artwork on one page and words on the other in sweeping, graceful font.

He looks up when a shadow falls across the page.

“So, how was your group meeting?” Will says, sitting on the armrest of the chair.

Nico’s tempted to ignore him. Will’s lie, though to him it might not have been one, sits heavily on his mind. The question sounds so clinical, something his therapist would ask, and it doesn’t sound much better from a part-time worker’s mouth. But Will puts an arm up around the headrest, almost touching him, and Nico says, to stop himself chasing that warmth, “Okay, I guess.”

“What, just _okay?_ ” Will pokes his arm, his knuckles maybe lingering more on his skin than is strictly necessary, and embarrassingly enough it starts a flurry of movement in his stomach, like a hundred skeletal butterflies resurrecting. “You gotta give me more to work with here.”

Nico shrugs. “I don’t much like talking about myself.”

“You should, though. Nobody’s gonna judge.”

Nico highly doubts that. “I guess… I don’t really agree with the twelve-step system.”

“Not a fan of the Christian undertone?” Nico turns his head towards Will, but their faces are too close together that he shifts quickly back to his former position. Will sounds amused as he continues. “A lot of people feel that way.”

Nico was referring to how the program seemed to insinuate that the root of all of his problems were drug related. It was a laughably naïve outlook to his situation, that curing his supposed addiction would suddenly have him a stand-up citizen. But Will’s presumption has him realize that the man is true to a point. He’s never been forced into any sort of belief, and when it comes to religion, Nico’s stance has been agnostic at its clearest. He finds monotheism’s belief in omni-benevolence fanciful, though he understands and envies those who take comfort in it. His brief foray into other religions did not fare much better. For example, Buddhism’s ideas of reincarnation and ‘life is pain’ attitude strike a chord within him, while its other dogmata, he finds less agreeing.

Overall he finds the talk of seeking guidance through a higher spiritual power dubious. All he’s sure about is that there are things, below or above, that he opts to think of in terms of fate, and that either they don’t care, or are entirely selfish.

It’s impossible to explain all this to Will, of course. “Sure, whatever,” he says, and a lull falls in their conversation. He gathers how Will must take his reticence as an effort to end their talk, and not wanting Will to leave, searches for something to say instead, and comes up short.

Will, however, stays put, jiggling his flip flop with his foot, and hums in agreement. Nico watches from the corner of his eye, waiting for that uncomfortable look he’s so accustomed to, but finds Will, splayed out on the plushy arm and backside of the chair, looking content and lax, rather like a cat lounging under the sun. If Nico didn’t know any better, he’d say Will looked to be enjoying Nico’s presence.

It’s inconceivable. He doesn’t think anyone ever did so. Even those he can safely say loves, or loved him; Bianca, Reyna, and Hazel, they worry over him, and keep trying to prove that they do, but he’s fully aware they are and weren’t _comfortable_ with him. That’s why he was so upset when Bianca left him that fated year for an all-girl’s wilderness camp (and later more), not because she was willingly leaving him, but because as she laughed with Thalia and the other girls, he realized he’d never seen her looking so much her own age of 12.

Will points to the picture of the page of the book. “Hey, what’s this?”

Nico is pretty sure Will didn’t notice Nico studying his face. Will is pointing at the butterfly on top of a naked girl, who’s being kissed in the cheek by a boy with wings. Their skin glow in a world of pastel, and their postures are stiff and faintly absurd.

“It’s Psyche,” he says unthinkingly.

“Who’s Ph-shu-kae?” Will asks, confused.

Nico winces. Camp Half-blood’s curriculum was elite, ostentatious, and in part redundant, and his own interests served further in the inclination. “Psyche, I mean,” he says, pronouncing the name in English this time, letting it turn coarse on his tongue and bring along its modern, negative implications.

“What was that you said before?”

“It’s how it’s pronounced in Ancient Greek,” Nico says reluctantly. “I’ve… heard it somewhere. I thought it sounded nicer,” He invents wildly.

Will jokingly whistles. “Woah, Greek. What, you know Latin, too?” He says, clearly teasing. Nico doesn’t answer. He’s had to watch his horizons collapse, and tell himself it doesn’t matter. He’s had to remind himself he’s a high school dropout, make himself forget the elitism and bury his ambitions. He’s had to fold himself to others’ presumptions of his ignorance, and he’d be lying if he said it didn’t hurt sometimes.

“So, Psyche. She’s Cupid’s wife, isn’t she?” Will says.

Nico watches the picture, Cupid’s lips lightly touching Psyche, the moment of Psyche’s sexual awakening. “Yeah. Cupid’s an asshole,” he says and bites his lip, aware of the stupid symbolism.

“Oh, this is where the whole ‘souls are butterflies’ thing come from, isn’t it?” Will says. “I always wondered about that. They read a poem about butterflies at my brother’s funeral. I just figured people want to believe their souls are like butterflies- all delicate and fluttery.”

Will’s lighthearted tone catches Nico off guard. “I’m sorry,” Nico says.

“What for?” Will smiles at Nico‘s expression. “It was years ago and it was an accident. And he’s in a good place, I’m sure of it.”

That sounds exactly like Bianca’s death. And yet while Nico had let that break him apart, Will is here whole and shining. Nico does not understand it. “Is that why you’re in med school? To save people?”

“Only partly,” Will says. “And it’s not about the patients, really. It’s more selfish than that. It’s about _me_ feeling good when I help others.”

“That’s not selfish.”

“It is. Not very heroic, either. But it’s good selfish, you know?”

Nico raises an eyebrow at that, but he understands the difference between doing something for others and doing something for oneself, the difference between a hero and a good man. He’s been led up to idolize the hero, probably from that moment when Percy saved him from a bunch of bullies so many years ago, and perhaps he’s been following that creed himself, if only because he could not see the point of the alternative, but there it is now, in front of him, in the form of a blond young man, who’s looking at him with a smile on his lips-

He starts, realizing they’re staring at each other, face to face, and turns to fix his gaze upon the book. Will laughs and leans back a bit, brushing against Nico, and again, the feeling of skeleton butterflies resurrecting.

He stares at the butterfly above Psyche. He thinks of Psyche, going down to the Underworld, to be brought back by Eros to immortality, resurrected and elevated, and thinks that may be why Psyche is symbolized with butterflies. Butterflies resurrecting. It’s an odd turn of phrase, and yet, the metamorphoses of cocoon to butterfly is something very like resurrection.

He thinks of Will and the butterflies his touches give him as he goes back to his room, after Will left to work on his job. He thinks of how dead he felt, and still does. And yet there’s a foreign sentiment rising from with him, slowly and cautiously, a welcoming of change.

The florescent lights are off, and the room is laminated only by the bedside lamps. Dakota is lying on his bed, texting furiously with his phone. Making his way to the bed, Nico steps on something, and he hears a small crinkling sound.

Lifting his boot up, he sees ripped, powdered wings. It’s a butterfly.

“Eww, gross man,” Dakota says from the bed. “It was already dead, though, I think. It’s been flinging itself at the lamp for a while now. Probably burned itself.”

Nico looks more closely, and he sees it’s actually a moth.

“I hate moths, man. Gross.” Dakota says, still typing.

Nico removes his boots. Butterflies and moths, they’re easy to mix up. Nico thinks of the butterflies in his stomach and wonders if he wasn’t confused before as well. He thinks of Will, bright and alluring, and his attraction to him, and imagines himself burning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to admit I'm not very fond of this chapter. I'd welcome any question you might have, thanks.


	5. Addict

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nico's first kiss

As banal as it sounds, it’s still true; Will becomes a constant in Nico’s life.

For almost two years, he’s been living on his father’s whim, but now he remembers how it is to have your day planned out. Will comes to work from five to nine on weekdays except Wednesday, nine to five on weekends. He watches the clock for Will to come find him. Sometimes he’s late, but mostly Will is tardy, like the overachieving student he is. More often than not, when he comes to say hi, he touches him, on the shoulder or on the elbow, breaching Nico’s space.

He’s the same the day Hazel comes to visit. He’s the one who leads his sister to the visiting room where he is waiting. He smiles at Nico, sitting nervously on his chair, and grasps his shoulder for a second before leaving the two alone.

Hazel hugs him before the door even closes.

Nico likes to think he’s stopped comparing Hazel to Bianca. Hazel came to him gift-wrapped, and though he shouldn’t be glad of Father’s infidelity and Marie Levesque’s death, he still is. But Bianca’s there, always on the brink of his mind, reminded at every turn of the breeze, and as Hazel’s tears wet his shoulder and her hair tickle his nose he cannot help thinking that she would have dealt him a blow on his back, and a string of curses in Italian.

Though, perhaps, if she still were here, he wouldn’t be here in the first place.

When Hazel recovers, she wipes her eyes with her handkerchief. “I was so worried, Nico.”

Nico kisses her forehead. He hadn’t really considered how all this would affect her. As much as he loves her, he plays little part in her life, and he has no doubt she is capable of being perfectly happy without him.

It’s two days before Thanksgiving, and Hazel is home for the holidays. She asked over the phone the week before, asking him to come home. He chose this instead. Hazel is enough family for him. The others, he fears would make him remember all over again why he ran to the Lotus Casino.

She tells him about Reyna, who’s in college now, majoring in Political Science.

“Did you tell her about me?” He asks.

“No. You know how scary she is.” Hazel forces a smile. “You tell her yourself.”

To his question about Bob, Hazel replies she doesn’t know, she hasn’t seen him in months, and Nico’s heart constricts painfully. Hazel does not know about the extent of Father’s operations, does not take him to be anything more than a businessman with some shady dealings on the side, and so could not imagine what Nico guesses, but she clearly senses his discomposure.

“So, what’s going on between you and that blond guy?” She asks, in an obvious attempt to change the subject.

Nico stares, wide-eyed, then says, “What?”

Hazel gives him a sly grin. “You know what I mean.” Her grin fades when Nico still looks at her, shocked. “Unless it’s not…?”

She looks nearly afraid now, and Nico, as much as he enjoys intimidating others, hates to see the look on Hazel, and so he says, “No, it’s… I mean, yes, I… You really think so?” As he asks, he gathers that somehow he’s more surprised that his own attraction was something so palpably real, not the other way around. Perhaps ‘between’ is the word that has him taken aback. For a very long time, admiration was something that was entirely personal.

Hazel laughs.

He cannot help examining himself in the mirror that afternoon, as if he believes he must have suddenly become more attractive. Naturally, what he faces are the same, uninspiring features. He’s nowhere vain enough to even entertain the thought that his opinion may stem from teenage insecurities. He looks young, but not _youthful,_ lithe and supple. He looks stunted and barren and sick and strangely disjointed.

And yet Will is attracted to him. Nico thinks he’s known it all along, and has only been waiting for someone else to confirm it. It really was all very obvious, what with the touches, the excuses to talk with him, his constant attention. And Will must have let it be known. The way he looks at him with undisguised attention, it’s impossible not to notice.

Over the course of the night, Nico stays awake for hours, watching the ceiling, and concludes that yes, Will likes him. Will’s a physical person, but he doesn’t act anywhere near as affectionate towards Cecil from the front desk, or Lou Ellen, another part time worker. There’s the question of how and why, but those are secondary problems. The real question is why Nico hasn’t acted back.

He thinks of Percy, or more precisely, himself watching Percy’s backside, too afraid even to look at the boy sideways. Even now, he is sure Percy didn’t know, never guessed about Nico. If he did, he would not have left Nico to suffer like that. Percy, he was too good a person to let anyone suffer.

The next day he makes up his mind. He’ll laugh at his own hubris later that day, but as he waits, tense, wavering every few minutes, he does it with a sense of ministration.

Nico meant to steer Will to some quiet corner, but a blood test is announced that afternoon, as they do at random intervals. Sitting on the examination table, he watches Will go through the procedures; washing his hands, taking out the equipment and so forth. “How come it’s always you that checks me?” he asks, to confirm what he already knows.

“I guess I like being causing you undue pain,” Will grins.

But Nico knows Will must have requested the position from the other workers in order to spend time alone with him. He can see how all of Will’s movements are drawn out, making the moment last. Will comes to talk to him as often he can, but it’s here that he’s the most overtly touchy.

“I still can’t believe you’re qualified to do this,” Nico says, watching Will prepare the needle.

“I told you, I got licensed so it’ll look good when I apply for med school,” Will says.

“And that’s also why you’re working here.” Nico conjectures.

“Nope, I’m here to stick needles in my favorite patient. Now hold still.” He rubs Nico’s arm with a swab of cotton and pricks the skin.

It feels strange to see the red travelling up the syringe, as if he’s thought there would be cold darkness in him instead. “Aren’t you busy in school? I mean, you work pretty long hours here.”

“Yeah, but it’s worth it.” Will turns away, storing the blood in a small glass bottle. “Don’t you agree?”

“Yeah,” Nico says, wishing Will were looking at him. “It is.”

He sounds strangely breathless, and Will must have noticed it too, because he looks up, slightly surprised, to flash him a quick smile. “College isn’t all that’s hyped up to be, really. I’d rather much be here.”

“Now, since you’ve been such a good boy,” Will says, turning back towards him with a smirk on his face. “I think you deserve a treat.”

Nico groans and rolls his eyes. “Solace.”

Will takes out two large lollipops from his pocket. “Here you go, all-organic, all-natural ingredient candies. Brush your teeth after you finish.”

Nico makes a face. “I’m not a little kid.” He takes the candies anyway, and sees they’re pomegranate flavored. “Did you actually buy them so you could play doctor on me?”

“Yes, you’re very welcome.” Will grins but Nico can tell he’s a bit embarrassed. “I noticed you like sweets, and they don’t really serve that sort of stuff here, so I figured you might enjoy a bit of a binge.”

Will makes to turn away, but Nico reaches out, and catches him by the elbow. “Yeah, thanks.”

Will’s standing right in front of him, and as Nico makes up his mind for the hundredth time that day, he can see Will’s freckles stretch as Will grins even bigger.

“Aww. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were actually being nice to me, Death Boy. This feels pretty good. You should try it more often. Being nice to me, I mean.”

It seems impossible that Will cannot hear how loud his heart is beating. “Solace, please shut up.”

Nico’s heart is pounding in his chest, and in his mind’s eye he sees a hundred scenarios of rejection, all amounting to him being alone again. He’s trying to remember everything he knows on how to proceed, and suddenly this seems like the worst way to do it. Shouldn’t there be an onrushing of spontaneous want and need? Suddenly it feels so wrong that he’s been planning for this the entire day, and yet, Will’s arm is in his hand, and he’s pretty sure it’s the first time he’s touched Will back, and he thinks that should mean something, more than it feels like right now, so he tugs the arm towards him, and only then is Will close enough, and Will is still grinning, and Nico sort of wants to punch it off his face and sort of wants to grin back, and Will’s thighs are pushing against his knees and he thinks maybe he should have been standing up for this, because he’ll be in an awkward position when he leans forward, and oh god, he’s leaning forward and yes, it is awkward, and his hand is coming up to cusp at Will’s neck and why the fuck won’t Will stop grinning…

Will stops grinning only when Nico does kiss him. Will kisses back fiercely open mouthed and nearly frighteningly, his arms wrapping around Nico’s waist and pulling him even closer, so Nico’s legs are hanging off the table and their torsos meet, and Will is between his legs. All this feels so surreal, Nico wants to open his eyes, to see how it all looks, but he can’t, he’s in a bit of a shock about how strange it feels to have his tongue sucked up into someone else’s mouth and he wants to breathe, but has a feeling that’s it’s too soon to pull apart. It’s wet, and the feeling of Will’s teeth takes him completely by surprise, the hardness, and sharpness of them. He’s kissing Will back with a conscious effort, though how much of his inexperience he can mask with the act of enthusiasm, he does not know.

Will ends the kiss grinning, as if he’s never stopped, and says, “Eager, are we? Want me to take care of it?”

Will sounds breathless, but Nico can tell Will’s world isn’t reeling like his. Sensibility is draining, as quickly as it managed to rise, tightening a phantom hold around Nico’s chest. He stares dumbly back, trying to make sense of this sudden inconsistency.

Will quickly looks towards the door, then scoots even closer towards him, so that they’re more colliding than osculating. “We have to be quick, okay? Quiet, too.”

Nico looks towards the door as well, as if he might see sense of Will’s words. He feels Will loosening his hold around Nico’s waist, and going for his chain belt. It’s only then that Nico realizes, with more shock than embarrassment, that he has his pocketknife in his pocket, and that Will was pressed up against it.

“Will,” he says, to explain the mistake. It’s quite ludicrous, though for whom, he’s not sure. But as Will looks up from his endeavor, Nico sees, under the door, a shadow coming to pause there. “Someone’s here.”

Will jerks away as if shocked, and Nico slides down from the examination table, oddly relieved and feeling calmer. When he opens the door, he sees down the hall, a large, bearish male, with a head of blond curls walking quickly away. Nico thinks he saw the man flinching at the sound of the door opening, but does not call him out.

“It’s Pollux,” Will says behind him, and Nico slides away from him, jumpy and uncomfortable. At Will’s denomination, he recalls a friend of Dakota’s, large yet light on his feet. “Do you think he heard anything?” Will whispers.

“No,” Nico says, not really caring.

“We have to go,” Will says, then corrects himself. “You have to go.”

“Yeah. See you tomorrow?” He did not meant for the last part to be a question, but doubt is rung out of him nonetheless. _Does_ he want to see Will tomorrow?

“Of course.” He puts a hand on Nico’s shoulder, and Nico looks back towards him. He wishes Will would kiss him again, and maybe he could rebuild the memory of a first kiss into something less imposing, but Will only gives a squeeze before retracting.

That night, after he is sure that Dakota is asleep, he snakes a hand under his pajamas. He hasn’t touched himself once since he came here, not even in the privacy of the shower stalls, which is a longer period of abstinence than he’s had in years. He tries to remember if the same can be said for his stint in the Lotus Hotel, but not even a haze of reminiscence remains to him. He thinks he must have, however. He weighs himself out on his hand and thinks that if he hadn’t, he must have imploded by now.

It’s the meds, he knows, that has him so sated. Even now, as he thinks of Will‘s hands so close to him, his libido comes slowly, and when it does arrive, it’s dull and disappointingly docile. Perhaps if he were off the meds, he would found Will’s jump to conclusion less crass. Perhaps he would have responded just as willingly back.

But he doubts that he would have. How come Will didn’t look surprised? How did the premise of sex so easily arise in Will’s mind? A sinking feeling envelopes him as the thought that Will wasn’t the only one to wrongly assess the situation comes to him for the first time.

He thinks of himself as 20, available, and openly gay, and another man abruptly kissing him. He tries to look at himself through Will’s eyes. There he is, seventeen- allegedly horniest as one can be and still be human, impulsive, locked up, and apparently world-wise. Put this way, there is no doubt about it, Nico’s coming on to Will.

Nico reclaims his hand from his briefs and lays it out on the sheets. He feels sick, and he imagines explaining the situation tomorrow. _Hey, that wasn’t a boner. I wasn’t trying to proposition you. I just wanted to acknowledge the fact you like me._

Even as he thinks, he knows he won’t say anything tomorrow. So what if he found out that the ‘not liking physical touches’ extended to the insides of his mouth as well? So what if the kiss failed as a love confession? And just because he was wrong and the way Will wants Nico isn’t like how Nico wanted Percy, it does not change the fact that Will wants him, which is more than he’s ever dreamed of anyone.

He senses how pathetic his own compliance with everything is, but he cannot think of an alternative for putting his mind at ease. The moment he starts wanting more is when regret will come claim his heart, and he vows not to subject Will to one of his grudges, as numerous and endearing as they are.

===

Ostensibly, Will is just the same, cheery self the next day. But Nico sees how his smile comes slower, and more forced than usual as he greets Nico, and he cannot bring himself to watch Will at close range. Will, however, approaches Nico in the hallway, and says, “Can I have a word with you?”

Will leads Nico to a deserted corner. “I want to apologize,” Will says.

“Yeah,” Nico says, feeling stupid about it a second later. Then relief comes, washing out the regret. But of course Will is going to make things right. Nico has tormented himself last night for no real reason, A mistake, surely, and Will will not be so presumptuous again.

“I think I forgot myself yesterday, and it’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that I can’t, you get that, right?”

Nico frowns, and Will continues. “I know you’re in Codependence, and leading you on is the worst thing I can do, and besides all that, it’s against the rules. Forming sexual and romantic relations with patients is like, the second biggest no no for workers there is.”

“Oh. So that’s what you’re apologizing about.” He suddenly feels very small and sharp. ”Yeah, I understand.” But he doesn’t, not really. He committed felony for Percy. He put his entire academic career, his relationship with his father, everything he had on the line just to make Percy see him in a favorable light. The idea that Will’s affection can countered off with something as trivial as facility guidelines is foreign and devastatingly degrading.

”We’re okay, right?” Will asks, reaching out to hold Nico’s hand.

“Yeah. Sure.” Nico senses he should smile, or respond back, but cannot make himself. “You should go back to work.” Will’s touches always made his stomach flutter, and now he hates himself for not being able to jerk his hand back, the implications of Will’s touches feeling very different.

Nico goes back to his room, hearing the sound of his boots reverberate in the empty hall. How was it that Will so casually touched him, from the moment they met? Is Nico so very obviously available? He hasn’t come out to anyone except Hazel, and Jason that one time they got drunk over a bottle of Cupid’s 1978. He likes to think he isn’t- though he recognizes it isn’t a bad thing in itself, he takes care not to let it show.

He hates how Will is making him doubt himself. Will was supposed to signify something better, something wholly unconnected to the past, but here Nico is, the same as always.

Dakota is not in his room when he enters, and Nico lies perpendicularly on the bed, hoping he won’t come in at all. He kicks off his boots, then hears muffled voices coming from the bathroom.

He goes to the door in his socks, and listens. There are voices, all right, and a continuous, rhythmic tapping sound that over lapses them. He hesitates, then knocks.

The voices stop instantly. “Dakota?” Nico calls out.

A moment of silence, then, “Yeah?”

“You’re all right there?”

“Yeah, of course I’m all right. Right is what I am. And you know what else is all right? Kool-aid, man. Kool-aid. Get it? Because it’s cool.”

Nico wants to back off. He couldn’t care less what his roommate gets up to. But the door opens before he can make a retreat, and he’s met with a pair of violet eyes.

Nico half expects Pollux to threaten him with something along the lines of ‘keep quiet or I report you’re screwing one of the workers’, and Nico would roll his eyes, just to prove a point, but Pollux only looks over Nico’s shoulder and says, “Wanna come in?”

Behind Pollux, Nico can see Dakota sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, and another figure that Nico recognizes as Clovis already passed out on the floor. The day after blood testing is, of course, the best time to use. Nico looks back at Pollux. Though he and Dakota looks completely different, with Pollux the much more better looking, there’s a similar vibe of insouciance to them that Nico has always craved. Nico steps in, and closes the door behind him.

===

“Nico, why?”

Nico resigns himself to pushing himself further into the chair. He’s had the same talk with his therapist and the counselors, but it’s the first time he’s been unable to look up into the questioner’s eyes. And what can he tell Will? That he hadn’t know they’d get found out?

Will sits on the coffee table facing him, though quickly sits up again when he upends it. “Shit,” he says, surprising Nico. Will takes a levelled breath then says, “Is this because of me?”

Nico wants to snort, call him out on his self-importance, but fears Will would look right through him.

“Nico, that’s… I didn’t mean…”

Nico looks up when Will does not continue, and sees a distant determination that is much more frightening than Will’s anger.

“Don’t,” Nico says. _Don’t leave me_ , he thinks, and maybe if he can find the courage to dismiss his useless pride for one second and say it aloud, Will would concede, but he can’t, and so the word is left hanging, meaningless.

Will sits on his haunches, scooting down to see eye to eye with him, as one would do with a child. “Promise me you won’t leave until you’re well.”

So Will knows, too, that he is the only reason Nico is still here. It’s ironic that only now, when the centre can no longer serve as a sanctuary to him, that Nico finds he may actually belong here. He’s found how little it takes for him to relapse, how dependent he is. All the others seem to have been right all along. He truly is an addict, though not necessary for lotus leaves.

Nico nods, because no matter how much he wanted Will to hurt, he cannot enjoy seeing it in face.

Will quits that day, and there’s an impromptu going away party going on at the workers’ lounge. Nico hears it, then stays locked up in his room all through it. _I’ll come visit_ , Will has said, and he probably would.

Nico lies on his bed, trying not to think of Percy, how he left Camp Half-blood because of him, and how, after all this time, he has not once gone back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have an addiction- it's called 'making Nico miserable'.


	6. Beneficiary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nico's first time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains sexual content. Before you get your hopes up, I feel obliged to inform you that I have strived my utmost to make it as unarousing as I could. Seriously.

There is a gap between the art building and its annex, and the wind that blows through it is accelerated so that it bites and cuts, no longer resembling its fellow humid brethren. Nico shivers in his black trench coat, body rigid with the effort not to hunch over.

Will cuts off from his explanation of the various university buildings. “Are you cold?”

“Just peachy.” He meant to sound sarcastic, but the effect is marred as the words pass through half-gritted teeth.

Will throws an arm around his shoulder, pulling him close. Nico looks sideways at the group of students passing their way, loud and possibly somewhat drunk, but they spare no glances at the two, reminding Nico one too many times how different his and Will’s worlds are. Nico tries to relax. He’s not comfortable with displays of public affection- though they touched and kissed in private whenever Will came to visit at the centre, it’s the first time he’s ventured out with him.

“Let’s get you inside.” It’s not a question, and Nico supposes he knew this was going to happen that moment last week when Will announced he’d be able to pull some strings to get Nico out for an afternoon. He knew the day wouldn’t end with a dinner at some pseudo-classy ristorante, however out of Will’s price range it was. And if it was merely a question of yes or no, his answer would definitely be the former, he knows it, and so he continues his effort to loosen up.

He hears the dormitory before he sees the sandstone walls and the lit windows. “Is there a party going on?” He asks.

“Nothing special, I think. People are just hyped cuz it’s almost the end of the semester.”

To Nico it sounds like there is something special going on, but he nods and lets Will do the talking.

“There are some really beautiful oak trees a bit further up. You should really see them in spring,” Will says with unassuming pride. Is Nico overanalyzing as always, or is there contained, within Will’s words, the possibility of whatever they have lasting another season? He doesn’t consider the notion long enough to be pleased by it; ever since he’s accepted the centre as his sanctuary, he doesn’t let thoughts of the future, any sort of future, dispel the illusion.

The sound of voices and music from the communal area is accentuated by people conversing in the hallway. It’s the same on the second floor, and as Will is stopped several times by ‘hello’s, he concentrates on mentally imploring Will not to introduce him. It must have worked to a degree, and Nico is left to stand awkwardly alone each time this happens.

The sounds; the music and the talking, they’re barely muffled even when the door to Will’s room is closed, and Nico can feel the slight vibrations against his back as Will pushes him against the door and kisses him. He’s caged in, in a way he’s pretty sure is meant to be hot, and he does feel a sharp spark of arousal at Will’s hand moving into his shirt. And yet there’s something orchestrated and practiced about Will’s movements that, along with the conversation he could hear from behind, leads him to turn his face away.

“Your roommate,” he asks breathlessly.

Will intermits his answer with kisses down Nico’s neck. “Said he won’t be here tonight.”

“Is that your bed?” Nico asks, pointing his chin at the neater bed.

“Yeah, that one.” Will grins at him, and Nico, knowing how inadvertently needy he sounded, smirks back at him, trying to quell his tension. He gives Will an experimental push, and Will backs away towards the bed, but not without hooking a thumb in Nico’s jeans and pulling him with him.

Will sits on the bed, pulling Nico close. “Wait,” Nico says when Will’s hands go for Nico’s his jean button. Nico sits next to him, and he can feel Will’s eyes on him as he unlaces his boots. “Take your things off, too,” he says.

“Yeah?” Will says, sounding amused. He continues to disrobe quickly and unceremoniously.

Nico raises an eyebrow, still smirking, but really regretting saying anything. Will’s confidence, the way he sits back relaxed, showing every part of himself unashamedly, makes him feel vulnerable, though Will’s the one who’s naked. He’d rather have Will undress him than have him openly watch Nico like he’s doing now.

The room is little warmer than outside, and he’s shivering openly as he removes the rest of his clothing.

Will’s hair is fair enough that he looks smooth and downright young in the darkness. Nico wonders what Will’s thinking as he runs his hand down Nico’s much hairier chest. (Nico’s half-Greek and half-Italian, and biology, apparently, is a real thing.) “You’re freezing,” Will says. Nico shrugs, nervous and unwilling to show it. Will pats down a spot on the bed, and Nico lies down as he’s bid. Will climbs on top of him, and for the first time that day Nico finds himself starting to appreciate Will’s presence unto himself. Will’s warmth is even more tangible than the concurrent feeling of mouth against mouth, erection against erection, and he can imagine Will as some faceless blanket there to shield him from the rest of the world.

Will breaks the kiss, and reaches towards the bedside table. “Dammit,” he says after some rummaging.

“What is it?”

“I forgot, I’m out of lube.”

Nico allows for a moment of intense, telling relief, then the implication of that sentence throws him off kilter. Before Nico can do something embarrassing and childish like asking about it, however, Will smiles sheepishly at him. “I’ll make it up for that, shall I?”

Nico misses Will’s warmth as soon as he’s gone from his immediate sight, and he lies inert, arms hanging uselessly, as Will sucks and kisses down, and there is a mulish, resentful, and irrational part of him that blames Will for rendering him thus, this log on his bed that’s expected to enjoy this little performance. For a second he truly is disappointed by Will’s ‘mistake’, as he imagines as a bright flashing image, Will getting fucked into the mattress beneath him, blushing and head reared back to expose his neck in a facsimile to submission.

But of course he knows that’s not how it works, knows that meekness has little to do with whose hole they use, and anyhow, such thoughts are difficult to hold on to when Will’s breath is there to ghost on his groin. He comes embarrassingly quickly, in violent jerks of his hips that Will restrains with his weight. He’s still panting when Will comes to lie next to him, and he closes his mouth to breathe through his nose.

Will plays with the curls of his hair, now slightly wet with sweat and quickly turning cold. Nico would like to stay like this, an unthinking mess of sensations. Everything happened so quickly, he felt something rising towards him in an all-consuming mass of tides, and maybe if he let himself go a bit more, or if the moment had stretched a bit further he would have been submerged and lost. But it didn’t, and he feels like he’s been washed ashore, everything leaving him gradually and cruelly. He closes his eyes, and even when the dizziness subsides, does not open them.

Will kisses the corner of his mouth. “You liked that?”

He’s reluctant to open his eyes, but he does and forces a lazy smirk. “Yeah.” Now the initial sensations have faded away he thinks maybe that it wasn’t the immense, world-changing experience he‘s been taught to expect, but he liked it, yes. He did enjoy it, and he liked Will swallowing as if he’d actually enjoy Nico inside of him.

But he understands what Will is asking of him, and he lifts himself up, light-headed. Will crosses his arms behind his head. Sitting, he tries touching Will’s torso, the muscles warm and shifting under his splayed fingers. He wonders if he should try kissing the skin, or maybe caress the nipples like Will did to him, but there is an unfinished, raw aspect of the human body that’s present in Will’s beauty, or at least in Nico’s attraction to him, that translates to something like fear, of the big, hulking living thing that _wants_ something from him.

After a bit of hesitation, he moves down without doing anything else. Now, this feels more manageable. This incongruous, moist thing that’s a bit ridiculous in its own prideful stance. It’s a dusky pink, lighter in color and longer than his, and Nico thinks, with a calmness that is only achieved after an orgasm, that it’s quite pretty, really. He touches it, first cautiously and then with more confidence. Will gives a contended moan that honestly sounds a bit histrionic. He lets go, perversely wayward. He explores the blond pubic hair instead. It’s trimmed short, and he finds himself wishing it wasn’t, he thinks he would have liked to sink his fingers in.

“Nico,” whines Will from above him, as if Nico’s purposefully teasing him, and Nico musters a flare of annoyance. This time he holds the shaft and tries kissing the tip. He ignores Will’s further groans. Like this, it’s like Will, and the act itself, are rendered to the mere phallus. That Nico can manage.

But manageable, perhaps, isn’t the right sentiment. Even as he’s bobbing his head and hand up and down, Will’s fingers grasping the roots of his hair, he feels as if he’s stepped outside himself, watching the scene unfold. Insert-extract-insert-extract… This people are supposed to do out of love, this mindless operation.

Nico withdraws at Will’s words and watches him twitch, and paint Nico’s hand white. Nico’s aroused again at the sight and smell, all the while entertaining a curious mixture of both contempt and amusement at his own arousal. He pokes out his tongue and cautiously licks his own hand, but stops, discomfited, upon catching Will staring at him.

He leans out of the bed and grabs a sock to clean up with. “I think this is yours,” he says, wiping down.

“It was dirty anyway.”

Nico mock frowns. “Thanks for reminding me.”

Will laughs and reaches out for him. Nico is glad the bed is so small. He can nestle under the sheets, hiding his desire to cling indefinitely to the solid warmth beside him. He scoots a bit lower, burying his face in Will’s hollow of the shoulder. At some point he feels himself thawing, liquefying into Will’s various crannies. His consciousness titillates in and out of sleep, and he thinks how he has wanted this, being held by an unidentifiable, stronger presence- _defining_ him. Cogitates, ergo sum, he thinks absently. You think, therefore I am. He wonders if this is where his attraction to men has stemmed from, or if it is the culmination of it; if it was already innate in him that day he first saw Percy.

The hand stroking his hair stops. Nico takes little notice of it until it’s there at his chin, raising his face upwards. “Hey, Nico.” He doesn’t open his eyes, even though the illusion of the anonymous male figure was already dispelled by Will’s voice. Will says again, with laughter in his voice, “Nico!” Nico slowly opens his eyes to look at him, acting sleepier than he really is.

“I’ve got something to tell you.” Will isn’t smiling anymore. He sounds determined.

The tone takes a second to register, and suddenly Nico is genuinely afraid of what Will might say. He doesn’t answer but looks back, completely awake. They were fine just now. _He_ was fine. Why does Will have to go and ruin-

“I love you.”

Nico stares numbly back. It can’t be. He knows the meaning of that word. He knows it too well. He would recognize, better than anyone, the crippling, unquestioning devotion; of losing yourself in ardor as a self-made slave; to have the rest of the world and your every belief disintegrate leaving nothing but a man-shaped center of the universe. The way Will looks at him is nothing as such. Surely Will knows it as well.

Will is still watching, waiting for Nico to respond. “I…” His voice cracks. “I love you too, Will.” He sounds so hollow, he says it again, trying to solidify the words, transform them from mere sounds to a facsimile of a truth. “I love you, too.” There is a part of him in a strange horizon, small and hard, and it is screaming and whimpering. Nico longs to be shaken, grabbed and brought forcibly to reality and made to face his falsehood.

Nico blinks, his sight blurry. He closes his eyes as Will wipes them with his thumb, and kisses his lashes. “Oh, Nico,” Will says, and Nico opens his eyes, shocked at the fondness and laughter in his voice.

Oh, but yes, _Will_ would think Nico was crying from happiness. That is who Will is, that is how he thinks.

And he does not know Nico at all.

Their physical positions have not changed, but it’s as if the outside wind has found its way into the room and into their embrace. It’s cold again, so that his fingers are numb, or perhaps it’s just the latter that’s true, he doesn’t know. He can feel himself ebbing away, retreating from Will. Again, it’s like he’s stepped outside his own body, marveling at how two people can be so close and yet so far away.

This time when Will kisses him Nico doesn’t even feign enthusiasm, and Will ends it quickly, possibly thinking Nico’s in shock.

“I was thinking,” Will says, “You’ll be leaving rehab soon, right?”

Nico’s possibly overstayed, in fact. He’s been so content to play House with Will, pretending the outside world managed to vanish, and that Will meant enough to him to make it so. “Yeah,” Nico croaks. He doesn’t bother clearing his throat, though.

“I didn’t think you had a place to stay after that. And I figured I’d move out next semester anyway, get a place of my own,” Will says. He sounds so infuriatingly composed, as if there’s no chance Nico would refuse. In reality, Nico concedes, it is more the calmness of someone who has their life planned out, and has all the means to achieve it. “You could live with me, study for your GED, it won’t be too hard. I’ll help you, I tutored in high school,” Will continues on. “There’s a community college nearby you could go to after that, I think they’re pretty flexible about admission, so no need to worry.”

Nico has to muster the urge to snort in derision. Will’s school, the one he’s so proud of, would have barely qualified for safety to the less privileged kids in Camp Half-Blood. Just another reflection of the fact that he’s not who Will thinks he is. He knows what Will thinks of him; a misunderstood victim of a teenager with a soft heart. And he knows that’s not who he is at all. He’s fooled Will with his own self-victimization. He’s not weak in the way Will thinks he is, and it’s not external neglect that pushed him down this hole. He’s not some poor, misguided child. He knew what he was getting into, and nobody made him do the things he did. It’s his own actions, and his inability to face the repercussions of them that caused his breakdown. “I’ll think about it,” Nico mutters.

Will hums, unruffled, but tactfully dropping the subject. “I missed you, you know. I know I visited like every other day but it’s not the same.”

Before he met Will, Nico didn’t know people actually said this sort of schmaltzy stuff aloud in real life. Nico’s thought are so cold and contemptuous it’s ridiculous. Because no, Will’s not the one to be blamed and laughed at. Nico’s the one who’s breaking his own heart, he’s the one who’s never told Will about his past in more than vague, broad strokes and so created the false image of himself that Will apparently has fallen in love with. It’s not Will’s fault Nico was ashamed to tell him who he really was.

And really, is Will’s plan so unreasonable? An inch away, Will’s talking about menial things, about homework and tests and other trivialities, their conversation one-sided as always, thanks to Nico’s reticence, and Nico really considers Will’s previous words. It’s a humble life, one he’s never really envisioned for himself. That Nico from Will’s fantasy, hardworking and happy, feels nothing like him. That Nico isn’t the son of his father, isn’t the brother of his dead sister, and doesn’t harbor a decaying crush. That Nico isn’t anything, really, except a recipient of Will’s charity.

Then again, is it so inconceivable to throw away his pride and misguided loyalty? Isn’t a recipient exactly he wished and strived for? He thinks, maybe, in some way, he wants that future for himself. He still cannot see himself living it- the scenario seems too sheep-like, something fed to the public to appeal to their idea of stability.

But the thing is, he’s wished for so long to be wanted, to have meaning to someone. Right now he may not be the Nico that Will loves, but he could be, couldn’t he?

“I could.”

“What?” Will says, cutting off.

Nico licks his lips. “I want to.” His voice is barely a whisper, and he says more loudly. “I want to live with you, I want-“ Will laughs a full on belly-laugh that fills the whole room, and kisses him. Nico thinks maybe he could get used to kissing Will someday. He could get used to a lot of things- blond hair, blue eyes, the smell of Axe. At one point they’ll stop evoking a twinge of wrongness. After all, it can’t be very hard to love someone who loves you back. That’s why he was resentful of Percy, wasn’t he, if it was impossible in the first place, he wouldn’t have blamed him so much.

Nico won’t be like that. He’s going to make an effort. He’s going to cut all the strings. He’s going to be that unattached, worthy person Will believes him to be. His heart races at the thought of leaving his past life- his past _deaths_ behind, not in the superficial, aimless way that was the Lotus Casino, but in actuality.

Later on, he’ll wonder why this seemed so much of a revelation to him, why he thought running towards something would be very different from all the times he ran away. In truth what he’s doing now is what he’s always done. The need to be loved is what controlled the whole of his life- for Percy, for Father. He somehow forgot the outcomes were never was good.

But what he’s thinking now is how he’d sound to Father, petitioning to leave his responsibilities behind. (He’d be doing it for Will’s safety, and not only to erase his past- he already manages to think.) He can see Father’s lip curl, his eyebrow rising a fraction in contempt. Nico is determined Will not be rendered one of his escapades, and yet he is fully aware that is how Father will see it, an easier way out, a mark of Nico’s failure.

For once he’ll face it all head-on, and his accomplishment will be his, not something to consecrate, and his choice will be a willing one.

“I have to go,” he says, pushing himself away from Will’s chest.

“Yeah, it’s getting pretty late, I’ll drive you back. Want some frozen yoghurt on the way-“

“No, I mean,” Nico raises himself up, assessing the situation, his mental tabs already clicking into place. His wallet and switchblade are in his coat pocket, that’s all he needs. “I’m leaving. I have some stuff left to do.”

His light-headedness is gone. He feels more grounded, for the first time in many months he has a plan and it’s one with a culmination he can look forward to.

Will gets up as well. “The centre, you mean?”

Nico slides down the foot of the bed to dress. “And more,” he says. He likes how confident he sounds. He looks back to see Will looking dumbfounded. “I’m going to come back, I promise. But I have to go.”

“Okay,” Will says, as if Nico ever asked for his consent. “Soon, right? Oh, and tell me your number. I can’t believe I don’t have it already.”

“I don’t have a phone.”

Will’s expression goes slightly glossy and sheepish, hiding guilt. He’s probably imagining Nico on the streets, penniless and hungry and high. Again, so very wrong, but it won’t matter anymore. That’s what Nico’s set out to do, isn’t he? Soon, Will’s imagined version of Nico’s past will be the only one that’s left.

Nico starts off with a smirk, but somehow it expands with a life of its own so that he’s somehow grinning. Will mirrors back, his grins easy to come as ever.

“Then how will I find you, Cinderella?” Will asks.

Nico’s teetering on the verge of laughter now. “This isn’t that kind of a story.”

“Then what kind is it?”

“Guess.” Somehow Nico feels like the joke has turned on its head, as if there’s a part of him that knows what he shouldn’t and doesn’t, but he’s grinning, and Will looks nonsensically pleased that he is, so he shakes his head and leaves it at that. “I’ll be back. Promise on the Styx and everything.”

===

In a phone booth not far off campus, Nico calls a number.

“Yes?” says the voice through the phone, sharp and cold.

“It’s me.” Nico wonders if he should say more, but he needn’t have.

“Oh! How are you, sir, is there anything you need?” Minos says after a second, voice now oily and saccharine sweet.

One final, successful mission, to leave it all behind.

“Has the Doors of Death been found yet?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Realized while re-re-reading this chapter that I really need a beta.  
> And that a scene was influenced by Lady Chatterly's Lover. Guess my brain did that on its own after I quoted the book for an epigraph from a past chapter.
> 
> As always, would love to hear what you thought of this chapter.

**Author's Note:**

> Basically I'm ripping off big chunks from the books and garnishing them to make an AU. Questions? Comments? Tell me what you think!


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